


The White Cloth

by istia



Series: Rare Pairs [1]
Category: The Professionals
Genre: Angst, Drama, Established Relationship, M/M, POV George Cowley, POV Ray Doyle, POV William Bodie, Zine: Roses and Lavender 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-07-11
Updated: 1999-07-11
Packaged: 2017-10-02 06:11:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/istia/pseuds/istia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bodie and Doyle experience an angsty mid-relationship bump in the road.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The White Cloth

**Author's Note:**

> My first ever fanfic--and, wow, finishing it and handing it over to some friends to read was _so much fun_!
    
    
      
    
       Could I meet one who understood all...
       Without word, without search,
       Confession or lie,
       Without asking why,
    
       I would spread before him, like a white cloth,
       The heart and the soul...
       The filth and the gold.
       Perceptive, he would understand.
    
       And after I had plundered the heart,
       When all had been emptied and given away,
       I would feel neither anguish nor pain,
       But would know how rich I became.
    
          --Hannah Senesh, _Loneliness_, c1940

###### 20 October

"Och, lad, lie still, willye now, it's all right."

All right. Well, that was good to know. Hard really to be sure, but the voice, oddly enough, was a reassurance in itself. Yes, very odd, that. If he thought about it--and it was remarkably difficult to think at all--it was peculiar indeed that that voice, though as familiar as his own, should be reassuring. Yet in the close confines of a stifling and confusing darkness, the familiar burr, underpinned with a characteristic mix of impatience and command, was a kind of comfort in itself. He wasn't alone in the darkness, then. Someone he was close to was close by. The confusion didn't lessen, but the panic receded enough for him to pause and try to think about his situation.

The dark was the most immediate problem. Confusingly dark, like a veil wrapped around his eyes, so heavy it was almost tangible. He lifted a hand and tried to wipe at his eyes, but a sudden shocking pain in his shoulder made him freeze.

"Easy now, be still. Will you stop trying to move? You're not helping."

"Hel...ping...wha?"

Definitely confusing, and the voice had already become less reassuring. Why he should be in some dark and painful place with Cowley was a puzzle, and it was making him peevish trying to exercise his imagination--in lieu of his memory, which seemed entirely on holiday--in making up a plausible scenario to fit this situation.

"You're trapped, lad." The voice this time was more gentle than impatient, which made him wary; Cowley gentle was never quite to be trusted. "We're both trapped, come to that, but you're pinned by some rubble that I'm trying to shift. Now stay still until I get you free or we could bring down the rest of the roof!"

Ah, the situation explained, then. Trapped by half a roof. Everything as clear as smog now. If only it weren't so dark and--he wiggled experimentally--he didn't hurt quite so much in myriad places he couldn't exactly pinpoint.

He blinked his eyes, hoping for some improvement, but the dark remained as oppressively blank as before. He opted to listen instead, trying to gather his thoughts while he felt small tugs and shifts on the painful weights he slowly identified as pressing down on his lower body. He heard the grunts of Cowley breathing heavily, the slither and creak of objects moving against each other, the thud as weights hit what sounded like a cement floor--yes, cement, his flattened fingers identified beneath him--somewhere to his right. Cowley lifting and throwing off debris from his body. Okay, that was good. Now he knew what was going on. At least in the here and now.

"Wha...happen?"

Cowley panted, paused, seemed to take a long breath before speaking. "Burgess happened. Sent us word that we'd find the missing girl here. Instead, he'd rigged the place, though it's no surprise to find that he's as poor a bomber as he is everything else." He sounded exasperated, as though he were lecturing an erring agent about his incompetence. "A piddling explosion, though it did bring the roof down and sent us through the floor into the cellar. The whole place is rotted; nothing but a squat. If he'd had the sense to set the explosive on the central beam, he'd have had the whole place in splinters, and us with it!"

The absurdity of the situation, of that testy voice lecturing in the darkness, struck him, and he couldn't quite stop a giggle that rose like a bubble in his gut and worked its way merrily and quickly up through his system to emerge as a strangled, only partially suppressed gasp. Another one seemed about to escape when he felt a dry, warm hand touch his forehead, and he tensed under the touch, focusing. The hand moved to his cheek, fingers dusty and smelling of plaster and dankness.

He couldn't quite believe that touch. The gentleness of it...almost a caress. The Cow never caressed people. Well, some people, maybe, but not inept agents who managed to get themselves and their boss blown up, no, not them.

Still feeling a little giddy, he was momentarily tempted to make a grotesque face in the dark, the way he and his friends had done under the covers when they'd had sleepovers, to see if Cowley could tell what kind of monster he was supposed to be....

Funny, really, how easy it is to withstand certain temptations. Just goes to show you never know until the crunch comes.

The fingers moved to the side of his face, feather soft, a whisper over his skin, which felt abruptly hot, flushed. He was aware all at once of just how badly he was feeling. His head was pounding, his face felt stiff, his nose was stuffed up and his mouth felt as dry and plastery as Cowley's fingers. Wouldn't mind a drink, truth be known; but the only semi-fluid matter about seemed to be a sticky mess on the side of his face that Cowley's fingers were now investigating. He "ow!"ed crossly when the fingers encountered a hitherto unrealised lump, which immediately set up a throb in counterpoint to the pounding in the rest of his head; the fingers lifted away at once.

"Aye."

Aye! he thought, outraged. Call that an apology? Bloody hell, trapped in the bleeding dark with Cowley and a head fit to burst and a blackness so intense he couldn't remember anything--well, it seemed like that, all mixed up together, the dark blanking his mind just as it did his eyes.

He heard Cowley push himself up, breath catching on a tiny grunt, sounding in the dark as loud as the giggle that had escaped his own control. He could hear the drag in Cowley's uneven step and the tiny gasps that betrayed the effort it took as another weight was removed from him, thrown, the clatter and echo of its impact against other debris, and the slither and shift of the pile, eerily loud in the dark. Dust stirred in the air while the mouldy smell of broken old plaster made his nostrils twitch.

He felt a surge of uncomfortable compunction; Cowley was an old man. Not exactly fit, was he? Leg must be giving him gyp after a fall through a floor onto concrete. Might be injured, too. He struggled with a dry, uncooperative mouth.

"All...righ...sir?"

A pause, then another weight lifted and thrown. A slight hitch in the breathing, apparent to attentive ears despite the effort to smooth out the voice.

"I'll do for now. Naught to worry about at present."

Damn voice was almost gentle again, under the dryness. Bloody disconcerting. Typical, too, fobbing off the injured with some story; could tell just from the strain in Cowley's breathing that he wasn't in fine fettle. Bloody imbecile. Trust him to turn all heroic and stoic; be useless if he keeled over, too, wouldn't it? He'd be ready to swear (for the thousandth time) it was that crazy military background, all that crap about manly men enduring whatever the battle brought them for the sake of the greater good. Just like bloody Bo--

"Bo...thie!"

"Bodie's fine, lad. He's gone for help. He managed to save himself when the bomb went off; didn't pitch down here like some of us, managed to scramble free."

Pride in the voice now, cutting cleanly through the dark. Mingled with sternness, it was, and he had no doubt which of those was aimed at him. Well, but Bodie was okay. He lost the next few quiet words, all his senses swamped by the magnitude of the relief.

"...smashed the radio, too. We're miles from the nearest road. Might be quite some time before he gets back. Not before dawn, I expect."

Dawn? Um. He was suddenly rather giddily glad he hadn't commented on the darkness pressing in on him.

Though there were more serious problems at hand. Like the faint but definite rasp he could hear now in Cowley's breathing. Old man, old man's lungs, breathing plaster dust and moulds and dankness and, now he thought about it, cold, too. Damn cold air. His face felt hot, but there was a numbness at his back he now identified as an icy cold. The damp cement floor. All the effort Cowley was having to summon to get him free, in these conditions.

He wiggled again in cautious experiment, and felt a shifting of the debris still weighing down his feet. Felt, too, the definite movement of his foot--one, and then the other. That was all right, then. He shifted his legs apart carefully, preparing to freeze if his movements seemed about to make anything big shift. Rubble slid from his legs.

"What do you think you're doing, Doyle?"

"I thin...can slide. Hel...."

Ah, shit, forgot about that shoulder. Ah, bloody hell!

"T'otha...one."

He heard Cowley moving to his left side and crouching. He pressed himself up to a sitting position, face contorting with the fiery pain that pierced his side and shoulder as he clamped down on making any sound. Holding his right arm close against his chest in the position that caused the least pressure on his dislocated shoulder, he lifted his left arm until he felt Cowley fumble and then grasp it. With a single grunt from Cowley and hard-won silence from himself, they managed to get him pulled and scrambled back out of the pile of debris and into a far corner.

Cowley eased him down and he lay for some moments on his good side riding out the pain and disorientation. Damn giddiness was back. Like having vertigo, except lying down. Ridiculous. Felt a bit nauseated, too, which would really be too much. His mouth already tasted disgusting. Anyway, he could imagine Cowley's pithy comment if he couldn't control his stomach in the small, close space in which they were trapped.

The sound of something scraping on the floor roused him; he listened, straining to see. It was bloody dark; never got this dark in town. He cocked his head; it sounded like Cowley was dragging something. He could hear quick pants. Time for the old goat to pack it in, dammit. Done enough, hadn't they, getting away from the pile of unstable rubble?

He opened his mouth to say, "Oi, don't you think you'd better rest that leg of yours now? Sir," which came out, "Uh...thin...res...leg.... Sir."

"When I need your advice on what I should and shouldn't do with my leg, laddie my boy, I'll ask you."

Could hardly be called pithy, but it had a definite reassuring bite to it. He let go of some of his worry. Old fool was too stubborn and single-minded to keel over with a heart attack, anyway. Bodie always said so, when the issue of Cowley's relentless work-habits came up. "He'd just file it for later consideration if his heart tried to pack it in." He could remember grinning at the joke, inane though it was, Bodie no Monty Python. That had been a good night, all told....

Dumb crud. Why he couldn't.... Well, think about it later. No point now, was there.

Cowley eased awkwardly down beside him, breathing deeply, supporting hands sliding down the rough wall by his head. The old man sat with a sigh and stretched out his legs one after the other with care that was evident in the quiet dark. Going to be stiff in the morning, Cowley was, he thought. Poor bugger.

He drifted, blinking his eyes just a tad when he felt Cowley stir. The pain was manageable for the moment, and the nausea gone; all in all, now seemed a good time for them both to rest....

"Now, then, lad, time to see to that shoulder."

No, not a good idea, really, no--ah shit.

:::::::

"All's'all right, all's'all right."

Cowley started as he heard his own voice, husky with thirst, speaking a phrase evocative of his youth and not consciously recalled in years. Now, though, he could almost feel the liquid Scots voice enwrapping him as his mam rocked him during some childish trauma--sickness or a spat with his friends or the frustration of being always the smallest boy in the form. "All's'all right, then, my bonny lad, all's'all right, Mam's got you."

He smiled in the dark. That was his mam, a five-foot tower of strength and protectiveness. He shifted, trying to ease his aching back where it was resting against the rough brick wall, his left shoulder pressed into the corner. Best he could manage, getting Doyle as far away from the debris of the unstable floor above into this angled space. Which wasn't far, come to that, but make do and mend, Mam had always said. He'd found what felt like a work bench to one side, rickety but whole, and he'd managed to drag it and up-end it in front of this corner. If more rubble fell, it would either protect them or crush them. Well.

It was still an hour or so to dawn, he judged, feeling the increasingly clammy chill. Bodie would move as hard and as fast as he could with that leg wound, but it would need luck for him to find help before morning. Not to be counted on. Prepare for the worst, that was the only thing.

Not much to prepare, of course, but he'd got them into the corner, where the walls, although chill, at least protected them from the worst of the draughts, and he'd wrapped his filthy coat around Doyle after the lad'd passed out while his shoulder was replaced in its socket. He'd managed to pull the limp body into his lap for added warmth; it had taken most of his remaining strength lifting Doyle's lean but muscled upper body into his lap without further damaging that shoulder and the tender ribs. Doyle's fragile slightness was deceptive; he'd always known it, but the weight of the man was putting the devil into his bad leg, which had been spasming ever since the fall. Still, no option. Doyle was already feverish and shocky; lying on that damp floor could finish him. But not if George Cowley had anything to say about it.

Another soft hiss of pain and Doyle stirred; he held his breath until the jolt of pain down his own thigh eased.

"Bo...thie. Bo...."

He tried to tuck the coat more closely around the shivery man, but it wouldn't stretch any further. He sighed, and ran a hand that felt clumsy with cold once more over the curls stiff with plaster dust. It seemed to soothe the lad; truth be told, the monotonous stroking calmed himself, too.

"It's all right, all's'all right. Bodie's fine, he'll be back soon."

He licked uselessly at his dry lips. Young fool, he thought, scowling as he carefully eased free a finger caught in an unruly tangle before he resumed the slow stroking, thoughts returning to the events that had landed them here.

For a man who could barely count to twenty without removing his socks, Burgess had managed to lead them a clever enough chase. Crude bombs planted in various spots, even cruder threats issued about yet other targets, all tying up most of his free agents while he stayed with the team he'd initially assigned following a series of clues that were supposed to lead to the kidnapped girl. They'd led them to this isolated, abandoned farm.

His men had circled the small house, hawks on the hunt with eyes and ears alert for prey and talons honed for the kill. Bodie had entered from the west, Doyle from the east, kicking in the front and back doors, quartering and searching the few rooms. He had followed when the quick search revealed no girl and no Burgess. He'd stood in the hall, hair prickling on the back of his neck, listening, sensing, yet detecting only stillness...until Doyle opened a small, chest-high cupboard a few feet from him and shouted something indistinguishable. Doyle had plunged not towards the open door in the kitchen close to his own right but towards himself, uncomprehending in those few fatal seconds.

Doyle had tackled him, still shouting words that even now he couldn't put meaning to, presumably directed at Bodie; aye, and knowing the way the two of them worked, Bodie had probably understood the gist of it at least. All he himself could remember was Doyle's hard body hitting him, wrapping around him and then the two of them falling, his ears ringing with the explosion and the crash of rent timbers and shattering walls, ending with the plunge into darkness.

Doyle had got the worst of it, young fool. By design or accident--and he wouldn't tell his mam herself which one he suspected--Doyle had managed to hold onto him all the way down and twisted them so his landing had been cushioned by the younger man's body. The timbers, brick and plaster had dropped across Doyle's lower body as they'd both lain stunned, bounced apart by the impact.

He'd only been roused by Bodie's urgent calls. He'd checked Doyle, hearing the frantic note in Bodie's rough voice ease when he'd confirmed that Doyle was alive. They were close, those two.

Aye. Well. Best not to think too closely on that.

Yet sitting in the cold darkness with Doyle a heavy but warm weight in his lap, his hand moving over and over the uneven surface of the ridiculous mass of curls, he felt awareness stir in him. He was fond of both these two; he couldn't deny it. They were amongst the best he'd ever known, skilled, tough, clever, determined. Oh, and difficult, aye, there was that. Not always controllable, but he'd learned soon enough to predict the times when they'd slip the lead--when one was in danger, the other couldn't be held. Best to accept what ye canna change. Mam had been a pragmatist down to her little toe.

He wasn't sure just how bad the wound on Bodie's leg was, but it wouldn't stop him. He'd slog until he dropped, and then he'd crawl, if Doyle needed help.

Bodie was a loyal man, and a caring one, and not just to Doyle. Bodie would crawl for help if it were he alone who needed saving. The simple truth, though, was that the lad just might not crawl quite as ruthlessly through debilitating injury and pain, even while not consciously knowing what he was doing, for anyone else as he would with Doyle at risk. Nothing but unconsciousness would stop Bodie when Doyle needed help.

Ah, but they were a fine team! What it was to see them in action. He felt a swell of familiar pride, edged with an even more familiar impatience. He respected their abilities even as he couldn't abide their shirtiness in refusing to follow through in their thinking, to optimise their talents. Undeniably the best marksmen and street agents he had; but they were potentially the best thinkers, too, the best strategists and logicians. They had the capacity, but it needed to be honed. Doyle in particular could go far in the security forces if he'd learn to use that rabbit-warren of a mind of his, learn to plumb all those complex layers he was capable of utilising.

Well, he was young. Not much over thirty; nearly a third of a century younger than himself. He himself hadn't been as acute a thinker as Doyle was when he'd been his age; that was the frustration in dealing with the man. With both of them, for they had to be taken together. Young turks, still trying on the world for size.

There, in the chill damp of the cellar with the man's weight heavy on him, he was given another long-misplaced memory. Of warmth on his shoulders and brown fields and scents as foreign as the presence then by his side. Ah, but they, now, they'd been young--truly young. Still in their teens, right raw young turks they'd been, heady with their own abilities, angered with the injustices they were fighting, righteous, oh yes, there'd been that. The noble inspiration in being warriors against dictatorship and inequity.

He hadn't thought of Antonio in years, yet now he had a vivid image of the laughing brown face, the dancing eyes, so dark brown they looked black. Wicked they could be, those dark shining eyes, especially when the lad was telling risque jokes because he knew he'd get a rise out of his Scots compatriot. A man of the world he might have thought himself then, but traces of his mam's Presbyterian primness had still clung to him. Antonio had delighted in making him colour up; he'd been glad when his fair skin had taken on a constant pink tinge from the southern sun. Hid the worst of his blushes, anyway!

Tonio. Antonio Juan-Carlos del Rosario y Mercallo. They'd gravitated to each other instantly, despite their opposing temperaments and the suspicion that young foreigners harbour of each other at first. They'd been the youngest in the liaison group to which he'd been assigned as radioman--being considered too small at first to be useful in a fighting role--while Antonio was his brother's aide. They'd had their first and only fight because he'd insinuated--deliberately--that the Spaniards wouldn't be able to fight their way out of a sock without staunch British help. The best defence is a good offence; aye, Mam had her simple wisdom. They'd fought until they were leaning on each other, one too obstinate and the other too proud to admit defeat, and the men, watching that it didn't go too far, had cheered them as joint victors and made them shake hands. They'd been inseparable after that.

He shifted uneasily, which made his leg, presently quiescent, give a warning twinge. Doyle murmured and started to move; the right shoulder and the ribs needed to be kept still, so he resumed his soothing stroking and the man subsided. For a moment, it was as though he could feel Antonio's hair instead. He'd had curls, too, though tighter and coarser ones than Doyle's mop and as black as midnight. Sun-warmed, they'd smelt spicy. At night, the curls would still be warm, as though lit from within by the fire of his youthful energy, scented with the ground cloves in his mother's homemade shampoo....

Well. Best not to think too closely on that.

The warmth gave way to the chill of bricks surrounding him, the spiciness so briefly recalled replaced by the mustiness of rotted plaster. The curls under his stiff, trembling fingers were softer, longer, filthier, the body lying across his lap that of a man full-grown, finer-boned yet broader in the shoulder, not at all like the echo of that long-ago memory. He tucked the coat uselessly a bit closer under the rounded chin and tensed to absorb another shudder of pain that passed from his unconscious agent through his own aching leg like a whiplash from the past. Yet from that well of awakened memories came, too, remembrance of a comfort nigh forgot, and he whispered it hoarsely into the blank darkness: "Aye, then, bonny lad, all's'all right, all's'all right...."

 

###### 22 October

Since pain and darkness were the sum of Doyle's immediate recollection upon waking, finding himself in relatively pain-free lightness was a cheering if slightly disconcerting experience. He drifted for a time, slowly becoming more alert as hazy memories of other brief awakenings surfaced. He moved cautiously, and then with more confidence, finally fully opening his eyes.

To meet brooding eyes staring down at him, opaque with suppressed emotion. Stupid berk. Needed a good thumping. As usual.

The first effort to tell his partner so left him moving his mouth in an embarrassing imitation of a fish, and making as much sound as one. Bodie turned to the bedside cabinet and picked up a plastic cup with an oddly awkward movement that caught his attention. Scowling at another failed attempt to speak, he accepted the bent straw and noisily sucked up a mouthful of water that tasted like purest wine. He murmured with unself-conscious pleasure, taking another suck on the straw, and realised only belatedly that Bodie was muttering something.

"Hmm?"

"I said, you're the only person I know who can slurp that disgustingly through a straw."

"Oh, ta much, thrilled to see you, too."

Bodie bent over the bed, filling his vision with darkness again, but the darkness he welcomed above all others. A blunt-tipped, callused finger stroked lightly down his cheek, then lifted his chin with gentle urging.

"Don't sulk, Raymond. One day your mouth will set like that, and then I won't be able to--"

The kiss was soft, sweet, open. Too soon, the warm, mobile lips lifted from his and Bodie was moving up away from him.

"Don't go," he said, rashly attempting to reach for him.

Trust the stupid sod to be standing on his bad side! And he would have to go and forget he had a bad side, or which bloody one it was.

"...take the cake, you really do...."

He blanked out Bodie's ranting, preferring simply to hang onto the hand that magically appeared in his own, warm and steady and strong, his dependable anchor. When the red tinge disappeared from the world and his heart calmed, he let go of Bodie to rub at a flushed cheek. Catching his breath with an effort, he looked again at his partner, recalled to the puzzle at hand.

"Why are you standing like that? Flamingos are pink, if you recall, mate. Don't come in black."

"You really shouldn't try to make jokes when you're emerging from a traumatic experience, Doyle. They're hard enough for you when you're firing on all cylinders."

"There's something wrong with the way you're moving, too. You're kind of--clunky. One-sided. Like you got mixed up this morning and put on one boot and one trainer."

Bodie looked suitably po-faced at the suggestion that he would ever thrust his perfect size-eight foot into as inappropriate an object as a trainer anywhere other than on the training field.

"Or like you don't want to put your weight on your--um--left leg."

Black leather-clad shoulders shrugged. "Sixteen stitches. Clean slice across the calf muscle. Well, a bit of a minor infection. A few days sick-leave and then stuck in files until I can run at speed again."

He managed an expressive if inelegant snort. "Run! You can barely walk, I'd say. Not to mention manage the stairs. Well, you always do prefer the lift if you can get away with it."

He smiled then, relief and happiness commingling into sleepy satiety not unlike the lassitude following a bout of easy loving. He watched as the opacity in the eyes staring broodingly down at him cleared, revealing the marvellous blue hidden in the black. A satisfied smirk turned Bodie's expressive mouth up into an impish grin, but the love was there, he could see it, all warmth and need and desire flowing out to him. Stupid bloody sod. Why couldn't he just....

"Going to nod off on me again?"

"Uh, no, 'course not. Wouldn't think of it, mate."

He forced his eyes open, studying the familiar face above him. Noted the dark puffiness under the fine eyes, the droop of the lids as though the extravagant lashes were too much weight for them to hold up. Minor infection?

"You've got more neck than a giraffe," he said, contentedly. "How's the Old Man? I didn't dream it, did I? Cowley being gentle, I mean."

Bodie mimed disbelief, dark eyebrows askew.

"I don't know about gentle," he said, "but he's all right. His leg's playing up--he blames you for that, by the way, something about you being heavy as well as a blasted nuisance--and he caught a chill that hasn't helped his temper. He was practically blue when we got you both out; he'd wrapped his coat around you and used his shirt to bind your shoulder, so he was sitting there in nothing but his vest looking cross as a wet cat."

They shared a grin at this irreverent picture.

"Doctors wanted him in here, but he refused to settle in a bed and is ruling the lads from the sofa in his office instead. Seems to be having a grand time tearing to shreds everyone's ideas about how to stop Burgess. Gave me a good bollocking and all about how long it took me to get back to you. Seemed to think I'd stopped for a picnic along the way."

He smiled sleepily at that, slitting his heavy eyes open to share the joke with Bodie, but caught instead the dark look back in those eyes, fastened on him with some purpose that made a shiver of goose-flesh flutter up his spine. Before he could open his mouth, though, Bodie spoke again, eyes shifting to fix on the far wall.

"That girl that was missing is okay, though. Burgess, the dozy toad, only tied her with her own blouse and skirt. She'd managed to get out of those even before I got back to you."

"Well, that's good, isn't it?" he said, tentative now in the face of the coldness spreading in his gut as Bodie straightened a little more, still looking past him, seeming to draw in on himself, spooked black crab caught in a tidal pool drawing into its shell.

"Ray--"

"Look, Bodie, it was a bad one, okay? But we got out of it okay, thanks to you, even the Old Man. And the girl's safe and we'll catch Burgess sometime, he's too stupid to--"

"I don't give a fuck about Burgess." The voice was flat, passionless.

So. There it was: the suppressed violence of fear and denial that Bodie wouldn't speak, would only show in his actions, his bloody stupid reactions.

He felt the panic congealing in his gut. He stared up at the face that wouldn't look at him, and he felt the rage begin in his heart, the black rage that would mask the threatening, the demeaning hurt.

"What do you give a fuck for, then?"

The rage spoke, not him; he wasn't ready for the confrontation, not now, feeling dopey and light-headed. He wasn't ready for any truths today. Bodie, though, who had refused to speak his truth when he himself had, a bare fortnight before, appeared ready now to do it. Perfect fucking timing as usual.

The eyes brooded on him again, hiding--what do you hide behind those pretty eyes when you deny the populace access to your soul, Bodie? And when did you lump me back in with the outsiders?

Rage masked the hurt. Or at least, valiant, it tried.

"I care about you. You know that. The whole time I was hiking back to that road, I kept thinking of how bad off you might be. Didn't trust Cowley to be straight; said you were okay, but I didn't know. Couldn't hear you, couldn't see you."

Bodie stopped, drew in air through flared nostrils. The wonderful eyes, fixed again on him, were flames now, Bunsen-burner blue, touch-me-not hot.

He stared up into them with deliberate challenge, tilting his threatening rage against that heat, trying to draw it onto himself. Fan it--and keep the cold away. He raised his left hand, turned it over slowly in a pacific gesture, palm down, and moved it in indication over his body.

"Well, you can see me now. We're both fine."

And are we going to be fine, Bodie? Are you going to let us be fine?

The eyes bored into him and, despite his rage, despite his challenge, despite the passion he'd bared in himself for Bodie, the heat was draining away. The eyes died to coldness; no longer blue-hearted flames, but chips of shale washed by the North Sea.

"I care about you, Ray. Probably always will. But I think we need some time to think, both of us."

He gripped the hot rage with both hands, refusing to let the cold seep into him, a chilling of his hopes.

"Too much thinking can be prejudicial to your health, mate," he said, tossing it off, clipped, hard, while his eyes slid to the generous mouth that had touched his, he'd thought, with all the sweetness of shared understanding. "Told me that often enough, haven't you."

"Ray."

Silence, except for a ragged sound he eventually identified as both of their breathing, uneasy in the quiet. He gathered the calm at the eye of his outrage.

"What are you trying to say, Bodie?"

"It's not a matter of what I feel for you--"

"Oh, I think it is. Self-delusion your scene, now, is it? Only way you can keep your cool? And that's important, isn't it."

Agitated breaths, in tandem; stupid, that, to be reminded of the sounds in the dark after climax. Weariness flowed over him, loosening his muscles and threatening to leach away his protective rage. He capitulated with another movement of his hand, this one hardly more than a twitch.

"Would've been easier to send a letter, wouldn't it? 'Dear Doyle....' What do you want, Bodie?"

"I want what we had--but that's not on offer any more, is it?"

"Isn't it?"

"Is it, Ray? Can you go back to that? To just screwing each other a couple of times a week?"

He refused to wince at the crudity, at its truth. He rubbed his gritty eyes, blanking out the vision of the cold sea lapping closer to his warm peace, making an island of his hopes, isolated and barren.

"I don't know."

He thought of it, forcing himself to it: having Bodie's body, but not Bodie. He thought, then, rather, of never having Bodie again at all, in any way, and shivered. He thought, despite himself, of Bodie's lips touching his those few minutes before, and the rightness of it. Why did it have to be so deceptively sweet that he felt in it promise and fulfilment, whereas it actually held only Bodie's flawed conception of caring?

He came out of his reverie at the touch of a warm finger against his cheek. A touch on the jut of the implanted cheekbone, where no one else ever touched him, more intimate in its way than sex. He cast about for his rage, a cloak of heat to ward off the encroaching chill.

"I just think maybe we both need time to think what we're doing--"

"Going to think deep thoughts, are you, with your dick up every bird you meet?"

"--just to know, to figure it out...." The strained voice trailed off.

He hated it when Bodie looked lost beneath the cool exterior. He was the one being turfed, wasn't he? Why should he feel guilty? Because he should have kept his mouth shut two weeks ago? Because he'd ruined a good thing?

But it wasn't really good; not the way it could be. Not the way he knew it could be.

"Right. Message received. Told you before, Bodie, we're both free to decide for ourselves. Put the light out, will you, mate? I'm falling asleep here. And I expect you ought to get off that leg for a bit. Your listing's making me seasick."

He settled himself, closed his eyes, studying the light beams on the dark canvas of his inner lids as he strove to block his awareness of the magnetic presence that continued to loom over him for several minutes. When, finally, with a soft tap-and-shuffle, the presence left him, he opened his eyes. He lay awake feeling the chill of loneliness seep into the place in his heart that his dying rage left undefended.

 

###### 20 November

"Get us both a drink, man, and stop prowling around like a banshee!"

A file slid across the desk, threatening his precarious stack of folders, and he growled as he grabbed for the ones he had been reviewing. A glass plunked down on the blotter and Doyle flopped into the chair in front of the desk. Giving up on getting any work done for the time being, Cowley leaned back in his chair, savouring the rich scent of the malt as he raised the glass. He stared over the rim at the slouched figure in front of him.

He allowed the silence to stretch, studying the closed face of this, one of his most talented agents, potentially one of the best men he'd ever worked with. One whose experience and knowledge he was tapping with growing surety. One, too, who had become increasingly well-known to him personally over the past few weeks. He noted the paleness, the tight-pinched mouth and the small lines of fatigue about the oddly set eyes.

He took a fortifying swallow, then said what had to be said: "Mendley made contact as scheduled with Bodie. He's well."

As expert as the lad was at hiding his thoughts, his feelings were even harder to read, even to one becoming accustomed to trying. The mouth twitched just a little and the eyes closed for a moment. That was all he could detect, except that the body slumped in the chair was truly relaxed now rather than poised with tension. Still, it was a good five minutes before Doyle finally spoke.

"Getting closer to the deal-makers then, is he?"

Hope flared painfully in the carefully casual voice.

"Not yet. Still a matter of lying low and waiting. Nothing to be gained by pushing."

"Mendley going to be seeing him regularly now?"

Oh, but it was casual! No wonder Doyle was one of his best; the lad knew the arts of dissembling inside-out. The large eyes, though, deceptively clear pools that they were, were set wide and blank on the wall to his right, as if Doyle didn't trust them not to be windows to his heart.

In profile, his face had a rumpled look. A crease in the forehead, the straight nose jutting, long upper lip, the mouth full but pursed inexpressively, chin set. Doyle had changed in the month since Bodie had left. Fit now, taut strength evident in the lean fluid body, yet with the pallor of illness clinging unnaturally to the round, introspective face. With his curls tamed by a severe haircut--barbered ruthlessly a week after Bodie's departure north on the deep-cover op for which he'd unexpectedly volunteered while Doyle was still in hospital--the man seemed austere and remote, untouchable.

Och, but few had ever touched this man, except Bodie. An unbidden image arose in his mind of a large, square hand tousling disorderly curls. He mentally shook himself back to the present.

"No. It was a one-off. Too dangerous for Bodie to acquire a regular contact. It worked this time with the cover of Mendley being an old girlfriend in town for business, the two of them meeting apparently accidentally in a bar. Next time, it will have to be an even more casual contact."

He sipped his drink, waiting with the patience that had slowly developed over these past weeks as he'd worked closely with the remaining half of his top pair, exploring Doyle's amazing store of insights into the criminal mind. In the process, he'd gained his own insights into the workings of the convoluted maze Doyle called a brain.

"When will that be, then?"

"Not for some weeks. Don't pull that face, man! We knew from the start it would be a long haul--"

"We! _We_ knew! Did we now."

Rage, fierce and bitter, flaring hot and then clamped away again behind the pressed lips, whitened with pressure, the shuttered eyes boring into a wall that they undoubtedly didn't see.

He thought unwillingly of Doyle's white-faced shock when he'd dragged himself into the office the day he was released from hospital, set on confrontation, demanding to know where his partner was. He'd been shocked himself later, in retrospect, reflective in the hour of quietude he enjoyed before bed. Surprising enough that Bodie, stone-faced, had requested the indefinite job in the north, with Doyle still injured and Bodie's own leg not healed, his pale face thinner than normal with the after-effects of the infection. He'd insisted, saying Doyle would be off the streets longer than himself and that his injury supported his cover of a mercenary out of work. He'd insisted with eyes bleak and determined.

He'd never have imagined Bodie would leave without telling Doyle. His own surprise, though, was a flicker to the blaze of outrage and denial that had set Doyle alight until acceptance had swept over him, dousing all passion, all heat. Doyle, since that day, had been keeping a tight rein on his feelings. All the observant watcher caught was the seepage: a hint of anger, a touch of bewilderment, a trace of pain. And, to the discerning eye, loneliness a palpable aura around the man, like a shadow stitched to him, a dark constant companion.

With deliberation, he closed the file, placing it with precision on top of the neatened stack of paperwork, ready to hand for the morning. He pushed himself up, welcoming the ease of movement he'd had lately, his leg in an untroubling period, and walked across the grey room to the hatstand by the door.

"Come along then, lad, you'd best drive me home; I'll be getting no more work done this night. We'll have a game and see if you've improved that dire offence of yours."

The black Ford Granada moved smoothly through the post-rush-hour traffic and slid familiarly into the garage, door lowering silently behind them as they left the motor and entered the secured entrance. He moved into his comfortable home, flicking on lights as he went, leaving Doyle to re-set the security system. Topcoat neatly placed on a wooden hanger, a brisk once-over the shoulders and back with the clothes brush from the shelf overhead making it ready to be donned next time; hat placed on the shelf; scarf pegged amongst others of its kind on the holder at the side of the cupboard; gloves set in readiness next to the hat. Door closed, and he moved into the living area, immediately drawing the curtains against the twilight, lined brocade moving smoothly to cover embroidered nets covering tempered glass monitored by hidden systems.

He turned, frowning at the sight of a brown leather jacket dropped negligently over the back of a chair, one glove stuffed in a pocket, the other tumbled onto the floor. The sound of whistling placed Doyle already in the kitchen, undoubtedly checking to see what Mrs Henning had left ready in the fridge. Tsking under his breath, he rescued the coat and gloves and placed them in the cupboard, catching the faint whiff of sweat as he shook out the leather.

"Roast beef and spuds, or a pot pie. She might be security-cleared, but she's not cordon bleu, is she?"

Doyle disappeared again without waiting for an answer. Difficult man, in more ways than one. Lifting the Waterford decanter, he paused to reflect that he had spent rather more time in the past alone with Bodie than with Doyle, but that that balance was changing now. He'd brought the hot-head home a mere six days after Bodie's departure, himself by then set on besieging the drawbridge to the agile but stubborn mind. He'd decided on chess as a means both to keep Doyle from driving every other one of his employees mad with his temperous fits and driving energy, and to force a way past the man's formidable defences. Obstinate wasn't in it, with Doyle. Bodie, now--except where Doyle himself was concerned--tended to be more biddable. He was certainly more socially adaptable.

He'd made the mistake once, years before, of taking Doyle with him to lunch at the Club, as bodyguard during one of those nonsensical death-threats the Minister insisted he take notice of despite the interference with his work. Doyle had glared at those who'd looked askance at his trainers and patched jeans, thrust a hip out at the gazes which acknowledged the undeniable sensuality the man seemed to exude like a heady after-shave, grunted at attempted small talk from highborn if doltish members (who had wandered over only to peer at the creature trailing him about) and slurped his tea with casual abandon. It had been an indecently quick meal; he'd had to take antacid tablets when he'd got back to HQ. He'd been convinced that if they stayed much longer, Doyle would start flaunting his broadest Derby accent and picking at his already chipped teeth. The pressure of hanging onto his own temper in public had threatened a smashing headache.

No, Bodie, with his smooth arrogance and flawless charm, fit himself far more palatably into those occasions when he was forced to bear-lead an agent about with himself. Bodie was just that much more subtle in his taking the mickey out of the fools with whom he was forced to mingle, so it had been Bodie who had driven him about when he needed stronger protection than his regular driver could provide, or when he needed a skilled assessment of a situation. His one-on-one contact with Doyle had been more limited--and limiting--than he had realised until these past weeks, the contrast with what he had learned recently about the man startling in its revelation of all he hadn't known.

In the weeks since Bodie had been gone, he had not only spent increasing amounts of time chivvying Doyle into putting his mind to work on the intricacies of tactical problems, but had forcibly separated him from his seemingly relentless immersion in work by bringing him to his own flat for dinner and a game of chess once every ten days or so. Doyle was taking Bodie's departure hard; no missing that. Certainly no one he worked with had missed the significance of his razor tongue and impatience and harsh-edged wit. Growly voiced with lack of sleep six days out of seven, driving himself and those around him mercilessly, he was a working dynamo, and a personal wreck. If he was seeking or maintaining a social life, it was impossible to tell. He wrapped prickly temper about himself like a cloak of protection, inimical eyes daring anyone to get too close.

Though none had ever got close to this man except his partner. Even that girl last year--Miss Holly, yes, her father still accommodated at Her Majesty's expense--had seen too late past the outer layers to the man within. Aye, and matters had changed after that mess, with Doyle; Bodie, too, come to that....

The clatter of dishes and a flurry of particularly piercing whistling awoke him to the matter at hand. He hastily downed a bracing measure of scotch before filling both glasses and taking them through to the dining room. Doyle deposited a steaming plate of roast beef and potatoes, with Brussels sprouts and baby carrots glistening with melted butter, in front of him at the head of the table before seating himself in his accustomed place to the left.

"Should put a pasta cookery book into her stocking this year," he said, cheerfully exhibiting the perfect table manners he infuriatingly misplaced whenever anyone important were about. "You could do with a few lighter dishes to compensate for all this heavy stuff."

"And you can be off home if you've nothing better to exercise your brain on than how to disrupt my perfectly acceptable domestic arrangements," he said, with a dour forbiddingness that only made the recalcitrant grin.

"You're just afraid I'll beat you this time. Well, has to happen soon! Beginner's luck should be kicking in any time now."

"I've told you, Doyle, luck has nothing to do with chess, except the luck of drawing a bad opponent."

"Didn't draw me, though, did you? Chose me. For some nefarious scheme all your own that'll come to light in its time, no doubt."

Narrowed eyes considering him with an intensity that was almost unsettling. Doyle was good at interrogation. Wide, apparently candid eyes could be oddly comforting to a pigeon asweat with anxiety, but when those eyes narrowed to all-too-sharp glints of frosty purpose, they seemed like gimlets able to bore down to the very marrow of a man's bones. He'd seen it happen more than once, Doyle's ability to switch from open-faced choir-boy to sharp-toothed predator unnerving some surprisingly tough men.

He gave him look for look, however, not caring for even the suggestion of threat at his own table from this boy barely out of leading-reins. Infuriating young whippersnapper! Nowt so bold as the young, Mam used to say, but there were limits--

"All right, you can stop glaring. Whatever plan you've conceived is safe. I've no breached your precinct walls." A filthy chuckle followed the execrable slip into dialect, both floating back out of the kitchen as Doyle carried the plates through.

"Oh, and by the way, Mr Cowley, sir," and he looked up to see the cropped head as curly as a cherub's peering at him disembodied from the edge of the door jamb, "banshees howl. They don't prowl. And you a Celt." Another rich chuckle wafted at him, indecently evocative of dark stirrings in places best left untouched, as the head took itself off out of view.

Suppressing a shiver, he took his drink into the living room and switched on the standard lamp near the chess table. He appreciated the soft glow of the light on the satin sheen of the walnut and ash men even as his mind remained fixed on the vivid presence filling his usually empty flat. Bodie had his own foibles and self-indulgences, of course, but on the whole, he was an easier companion than Doyle. Bodie. Still seemed impossible to think of t'one without t'other, as Mam....

"I'll take black this time," Doyle said, seating himself without ceremony, wiping the back of a damp hand down the front of an indecorously tight-clad thigh.

"You will, will you?"

Stung at this high-handedness, he was about to give into the itch to vent a piece of his mind when he noticed the grin tugging at the corners of the fine-cut mouth, and shut his own. The lad thrived on undermining authority. The trick--and, oh, tricky it was indeed--was to channel that iconoclastic aggression to where it would serve the best purpose.

"Aye, then," he said, silkily, "since you haven't proven outstanding at offence, we'll see how you do at defence."

Well, irritating the man certainly was. Also headstrong, unpredictable, generally aggravating, and downright infuriating too much of the time, mulish, insurgent--but, ah!, that sharp brain of his was such sweet pleasure to work with, to challenge.

He bested Doyle twice in succession, not quite with the ease of their first duels, but only slightly diverted by his opponent's unconventional moves. He patiently taught more classic defences and offences, watching with now accustomed resignation as Doyle assimilated the moves with ease, then rejected them to try his own versions. He knew the tried-and-true manoeuvres would appear in Doyle's strategy in future matches, Doyle wielding what had already become clear to him was a more controlled brand of unpredictability than he'd credited the lad with. Doyle would beat him one day, possibly not too far ahead. He knew that. It was part of what he was working for. That and the effort to stimulate Doyle's thinking processes to emulate and match his own in matters of more import than chess.

They discussed current ops with the avidity of fanatics. Or of men who had nothing else in their lives but their commitment to their work.

He looked at the down bent face of his opponent, sculpted by the lamp into a set of adjoining planes broken by jutting convexes and shadowed concavities. The face was furrowed with concentration as Doyle apparently considered his next move while his hidden focus was clearly on the muddle young Thomson had made of what should have been a simple, if sensitive, surveillance job. Doyle could undoubtedly have chosen a move ages before, but one of his more successful tactics was to vary the time he took to move, keeping his opponent unsure of whether the wait would be long or short, sometimes managing to force quick flurries of action that might well unsettle a less experienced player. Doyle knew his limitations, but he also knew a variety of compensations. It was part of what made him such an effective street agent, after all.

That, and his admirable facility to concentrate. The lad had never displayed quite this level of focus before, at least not sustained for such a time and at such a pitch. Previously, however, Bodie had always been there, at Doyle's back or his side, a presence splitting his attention from the pure concentration on the job at hand. Oh, they were committed and excellent on the job, no doubt about that; but the intellectual side of it all had only rarely grabbed Doyle's full attention. That nasty Preston business a few years back, Doyle's old mate from the force murdered, Doyle himself stalked. The lad had spent hours then, sleepless, searching records and tracking snitches for a trace of the missing rifle that had been stolen from his custody. Bodie had been there throughout, though; guarding and bolstering him. Not a distraction at that tense time, but a prop.

Doyle had never been without Bodie's support before. Not in all his years in CI5. Even during those occasions when they'd previously worked separately, they'd never been far apart. Bodie had been part of Doyle's life for all the years he had known the pair.

Without Bodie, Doyle was all he could ever have dreamt of in the way of an assistant. Lacking the refinements and contacts that come with higher education, but with a formidable native intellect and a talent for deductive thinking that lifted him above the norm even of the cream of the various branches of the security forces from which CI5 drew its operatives. All it had needed was this focus he now had.

The cost, though, had to be reckoned, though he'd come to the conclusion reluctantly. He'd been ignoring it, sure the lad would settle down to a more even keel once he got used to working without his partner for a time. They weren't joined at the hip! They were his smoothest, most reliable, aye, his best team in many ways, but they were formidable apart, too. No one was more suited to the particular op he was on than Bodie. No one else he'd yet recruited had quite Doyle's potential for the double- or even triple-think that could keep not only himself but other agents alive.

Doyle wasn't, however, gaining balance with time. Beneath the armour of prickly defensiveness, he exuded an aloneness he himself recognised all too well. Doyle and Bodie were close, but....

Och, well, he'd known, at heart. Best not to keep pretending otherwise.

He'd known the tearing loss himself when Annie had all-too-blithely left him after they'd both finished university, he a good ten years older than she. The War had delayed him. Both wars. The one of his raw youth and the one of his more mature and seasoned youth. He'd survived them both; survived a good many harsh times. But what he remembered with the most pain was when Annie, afire with a passion he had never been able to set ablaze, had left him.

He'd lived with constant loneliness since, the work his refuge, his family, his home, his life. He'd welcomed Doyle into that stark space with him, a fit apprentice found at last. Only now, reluctantly, was he admitting to himself that Doyle's abrupt single-mindedness was sourced from the same lonely well as his own.

He couldn't wish that existence on anyone, not even for his country's sake. Their lives themselves, aye, they were a price he might one day have to exact; but not the very minutes of their existence. Not that they should live this tearing pain of isolation with no recourse or recompense other than the cold comfort of a job done well and a nation kept safe to snipe and moan and take holidays in the sun and do their Christmas shopping without being torn to shreds by nail-bombs.

His eyes caught as slender fingers lifted the penultimate remaining black pawn and moved it with deliberation to a point of no provocation or offence at all. All that time for an empty feint! Arrogant young tearaway.

He glanced up and saw the tired lines marking the distinctive face. When Bodie returned, chances were he'd lose Doyle's dedication. He couldn't find the heart, though, to feel more than a token regret for the sake of England and his own pragmatic agenda.

 

###### 29 November

The ice in his gut never seemed quite as solidly frozen when he was in Cowley's flat as when he was in his own.

At work, it was simple. Easy to keep the fire of anger stoked inside himself by narrowing his gaze to the terrorists who taxed them and the incompetents within their own ranks who hindered rather than helped the fight. Bleeding bunch of amateurs, half of them. Why Cowley'd ever hired that pike-faced Jones-Squash, or whatever its fancy name was, he couldn't imagine, but he was damn well going to find out. Enough to have to put up with inexperience amongst recruits, but if it was going to be outright incompetence starting at the top and working its way down....

He took a breath, calming himself with an effort. Didn't really matter, now, did it? Out on his ear, old Smith-Polo or whosoever, along with his old-school-tie airs and his Great-Uncle Something-to-do-with-the-funding-budget-of-MI6, which hadn't been able to abide the sprig any longer so somehow or other had fobbed him off on Cowley, which only meant they'd had to figure out a way to second him neatly to Scotland Yard, Special Intelligence branch. Quite a coup, making them think they'd caught a live one, look good on their records, all those titles weighing down the inbred branches of the family tree.

A smile curved his mouth for a moment. The only kind of smile he seemed able to summon these days--the bitter, rueful kind. Except here, sometimes, with--of all people!--the Cow. Had a lovely dry sense of humour, the Cow did, once relaxed at home. Carefully manicured feet slid out of his expensive leather lace-ups and into expensive leather slippers and the man turned into, well, a man. How to turn a Cow into a man.

A tricky one, of course. He had no illusions that all the attention he'd been getting from the Controller was from the milk of human--or Cowlian--kindness. Cowley always had an agenda, and he usually managed to implement it, one way or another, to suit himself and his plans and his plans within the plans.

He'd about decided that what Cowley wanted this time was simply him, swotting away next to Himself, showing a like devotion to pruning the dead wood and exterminating the aphids that plagued the roses of the Fair Isle. Gotta bit of blight? Call George Cowley, rose-keeper extraordinaire.

Bodie would have found it fun.

But he didn't want to think about Bodie.

Not even a message. None at all. Not a scrap of paper with even a single word on it. Nothing. He felt a twitch of humiliation at remembering how he'd searched his flat with the diligence of the desperate and unbelieving. Not just once.

No message at the time his partner had gone north just two days after the afternoon when he'd woken to find Bodie staring down at him with that broody look about him. Nothing in the rare contacts agents had made with Bodie since in his deep cover. He'd read Mendley's report avidly, and the others. Read every brief word of the starkly unambiguous reports. Names to be checked. Possible transport dates for incoming or outgoing drugs and the arms they financed. He'd decided Bodie must be in the Merseyside area. Ships, old hometown, the accent down pat; Bodie would be a natural.

A natural whatever part he was playing. Not that it mattered.

He'd pushed too hard. Tried to grab too much of the pie. Greedy guts. It had just begun to seem so beautiful, though, so tantalisingly easy that he'd been beguiled into thinking Bodie would see it, too. See what they could make together out of what they already had. See that they needed it, both of them, not just him. Not just him. Was it?

In the end, maybe, it was just that they'd got out of sync. He'd been searching for security for a long time. He'd tasted it briefly with Ann, and lost it so quickly that he'd almost lost his bearings. How to bear with the aloneness again? It had yawned there at his feet, a black engulfing threat. Except he hadn't been alone, not with Bodie there, arm resting heavily over his shoulder. He'd thrown him off, tried to leave, but it was like he'd been rent open and he could see deep inside himself to the need he had for someone of his own. And nestled in there, inside himself, was already someone of his own. All he'd had to do was stop and wait. He hadn't even had to turn around. Or gesture. Or do anything but wait. And Bodie had come to him immediately.

That was September last year. Three months later--the day before Christmas Eve--he and Bodie had consummated their need for each other, their unique bond. Even Bodie had never really thought it was just sex; not with the innumerable ways their lives had interwoven over the years. Though if you needed to box parts of your life separate instead of taking it as an organic whole, then, okay, the sex was, well, primarily sex.

Trust Bodie to do just that. Not a surprise. His birds had always been sex and fun and dining and dancing. He'd never really had an Ann, never seemed to feel a need for one, either.

But then, he himself had always been there for Bodie. Or thought he'd been. Bodie'd never had a partner before, either, had he? Or had ever thought he needed or wanted one. He'd managed to change Bodie's mind about that. So he'd thought he could change his mind about what their having it off together meant, or could mean. If they tried to make more of it.

Bodie cared about him, he knew that. Bodie would die for him without even thinking about it. Fat lot of good that would do, and it wasn't anything to do with the point, anyway, but there it was. Bodie cared. It wasn't enough, though. It didn't keep the chill away. Maybe in some corner of her mind, Ann still cared about him, but it didn't mean shit, did it?

He rubbed irritably at his temple. Another frigging headache. It would probably go off soon. Always seemed to, once he'd been here for a bit. Cowley was oddly relaxing company, in a way. This flat, familiar now, was warmly reassuring. Elegantly decorated yet comfortable. He wondered idly if Cowley had had anything to do with the decoration, or if the flat had come like this, or he'd hired someone to do it. Yet it seemed to suit the at-home Cowley.

A big place, much bigger than his own flat, which seemed a cavern of echoing emptiness. He'd taken a bird home a couple of weeks after Bodie'd left. It had been a disaster. He'd done it from anger more than anything else, from the need to fight the icy waves that snatched at him if he loosened his grip on the hot, safe buoy of his rage. He'd thought that sexual heat, the heat of the chase itself, would warm him. He'd thought that sinking himself into warm female flesh, which he hadn't touched in the ten months since he and Bodie had started together, would light a flare of life inside himself.

She'd been willing enough, and warm and pretty. They'd moved into the bedroom after a cuddle on the sofa. She'd sunk down onto the bed, hanging onto his hand, tugging gently when he'd frozen, but he hadn't been able to move. All he'd seen was a stranger he didn't have the slightest interest in sitting on the bed he'd shared with Bodie.

The bitterness curled his mouth into that parody of a smile again. She'd been ever so understanding. Of course, she'd assumed the "person he was trying to get over" was another girl. She'd left her number, for when he was "feeling better".

He supposed he would actually "feel better" one day. One day, it might not matter any more that Bodie had left him, hadn't cared enough even to leave him a message.

Somehow, the thought of getting over it made him feel only more sour.

But for now, there was this peculiar comfort in being here, at Cowley's, in a place that had no memories. He wasn't due to move flats for another three months, and he had too much pride to ask for an early removal. He could have manufactured some excuse--spotted a possibly unreliable grass in the area who might pose a potential threat to his security--but he'd know that Cowley, at least, suspected the truth.

He was pretty sure Cowley knew about him and Bodie.

This flat was big. He'd never been here alone. What was it like, night after night, all the weeks and months of the year, to be alone in this big place? He felt his heart speed up the way it did sometimes when he had to think about going home for a few hours' rest, having stayed as long as he could first at HQ or on the job, then in a restaurant, then the pub. He shivered, and gulped at the whisky clenched in his hand.

Where the hell had Cowley got to? How long did one phone call take?

Bodie'd never rung, either. Well, he probably couldn't, though that beggared the point. Didn't want to, no doubt.

He wished he could stop checking his mail each day with that damned betraying surge of hope.

He moved to the chess board and sat behind his black troops. Tonight he'd demolish Cowley. He'd been confident he could do it the last time they'd played, but he'd waited, watching Cowley's responses to his moves. The old goat still had a tendency to underestimate him, and there was an undeniable pleasure in surprising him. Not often you got to put one over on the Old Man. Cowley was still a bloody exasperating and canny manipulator--you had to watch him every minute--yet he found an odd undeniable thrill in working with the Controller, letting his own mind mesh with the complicated, smoothly greased gears of the mastermind.

He didn't trust the sod any more than he ever had, yet he'd come to understand--reluctantly--a little of the reasoning that fed some of the hard decisions that had to be made and which so directly affected each agent's life.

He respected him, too, in quite personal terms, for having managed to live all these years alone in flats like this one, increasingly refined places, perhaps, but all equally empty. He doubted he could do it. Wasn't sure just what he was going to do, but for now, at least, being able to come here, to relax here, to absorb the warmth of company and spirited debate and shared--to an extent--goals, was keeping him from the edge. He didn't know what he'd do if Bodie came back. When Bodie came back. He didn't know what he'd do if Bodie never returned. He didn't know what he'd have done if Cowley hadn't provided him with this unexpected haven. Even with its price tag attached.

The Cow was certainly taking his time. The room seemed larger than usual, and cooler. Perhaps the central heating was on the blink. He looked about for his jacket. Cowley was always picking it up and putting it away. Damn military sorts with their neatnik habits; couldn't seem to get away from them.

Another shiver frissoned down his back. He thought about fetching his jacket, but then the whispery sound of leather slippers moving across thick wool pile reached him, and the chill receded and his heart slowed from its threatened panic thumping.

 

###### 20 January

These last minutes before retiring were on the shortlist of the most perfect pleasures of which Cowley could conceive. He sipped the last of his Glenmorangie, smiling with self-deprecation at this recognised daily ritual of indulging in the same placid thought almost every night of his life. Except on those nights, of course, on which he didn't get to retire at all, or when forced to snatch a few hours' rest at work when the pulses of adrenaline powering his blood, a natural booster which he'd long ago learnt to exploit, left him enervated.

Oh, there was no denying he was only truly himself, and properly fulfilled, when he had a job on, but even the Cow himself could enjoy his periods of respite, tucked into his neat-house and the neat-herder in his own snug cottage. It was a simple enough indulgence, this basking in the hard-won contentment he'd grappled with both hands from a life destined to seek out turmoil.

He placed the tumbler gently on the etched silver tray for Mrs Henning to see to in the morning, and turned to make his final check of the security systems. Beyond the heavy brocade curtains and stout doors lay the wilderness of blight and dolour that consumed his mind as it had his years. He knew himself fortunate that, so far, the havoc without had never penetrated his fastness so he could indulge in this false sense of safety in these few precious minutes before bed.

Well, but he knew well the world in which he lived. He knew how thin the walls were between safety and chaos. Old friends had had their parts in teaching him that lesson. Barry Martin, betrayer not only of friendship but of his country, had been an unparalleled teacher; Meredith, too, had played a part. Och, they were too many to recall in detail, the betrayals of a lifetime spent in security. So he set his locks and set them again, and checked them yet again even as he indulged his fancy of a haven of idyllic safety and peace.

He cocked his head as the shower stopped upstairs. He wasn't alone in his idyll tonight. He switched off the lamp, pausing to set a black knight straight on its white square before moving across the room. This would be the fourth night in the last seven weeks that he would retire to the company of a warm living presence rather than to wrestle with solitary insomnia and the spectres of cold memories. Indulgence, aye; no fool like an old fool. And Mam would have had the right of it!

He paused again, this time at the cherrywood sideboard, hesitating. Then, hands firm with decision, he opened the lower left-hand drawer and drew out a fragrant small box. Carved sandalwood attracted his stroking thumb and his twitching nostrils, teasing as it always did with its exotic scent and foreign designs. A cheap little thing, really, picked up on impulse in a Palestinian bazaar during the War. A souvenir of the Holy Land, it had originally held a card of white pasteboard with Psalm 23 printed on it in italic type and a tiny pressed blue flower, set behind a waxy shield, from a plant supposedly situated at the entrance to the supposed tomb of the Lord. He hadn't believed it for a moment, but he'd been in a hurry and he'd wanted his mam to have something from the Holy Land to show her friends at chapel. In the event, looking askant with faint disapproval, she'd accepted the card between two fingertips but had refused the aromatic and obviously pagan box, redolent with the warm richness of a world far from Glasgow.

He lifted the lid, quite gently, and surveyed the tatty few contents. He stirred the small, curling photographs with a finger, then drew out the top one, turning and smoothing it to look into a laughing face.

He'd loved twice in his life. The sum of those two experiences reposed here.

Annie's face laughed up at him with carefree youthfulness. Here was another, showing a more pensive face as she leaned back in a rowboat at Marlow, trailing a slim hand in the water and looking up at him--or into the camera lens, at least--with provocative promise. The third was of her standing with arms around her friends on the debating team after they'd won the finals cup. The small face was rendered in faded black and white, but he could still recall the flush of excitement and victory on the pointed features, the sparkle in the eyes that she got only from sex and public speaking. He smiled at the incongruity of the forces that had comprised that love of his young adulthood. The public and the private had never been at war in Annie; the public had always won.

He lifted out a hair-slide, studded with rhinestones now dulled with age. He'd found it when he was packing to leave his rooms at the end of his course, after she'd told him she had to pursue her goals and couldn't be a Major's wife, it wasn't for her, she was destined for much wider roads, he'd known that, surely. He'd found the slide on the floor and pocketed it, intending to return it to her, or to one of her friends, before leaving for town. Instead, when he'd seen her that last time, cheery as she'd wobbled her pushbike to a stop beside him on the cobblestones, he'd closed his hand around the sharp metal and not given it up. He'd felt shameful about that lapse for years afterwards, secreting it in his pagan box and bringing it out to ponder at increasingly longer intervals. Until the ill-fated reunion just three years before had tapped down the final nail in that particular coffin of fealty even as his bullet had put her current lover into a casket of his own.

Impatient, he dropped the tawdry bit of metal back into the box. Impossible to deny the past truth, though, no matter how wrong he'd been. He had loved her, quite devotedly. He had mourned the lack of her in his life for most of his adult years. Losing his illusions about her had only accentuated his aloneness.

He lifted out the last photo. This one was even more faded. A group of men in various types of uniform clustered on either side of a waterfall. How stupid to have cared about immortalising their memory of a waterfall, when it was only the people who would matter decades later! They'd taken two photos with the company camera, one with himself as cameraman and the other with Julio. Julio had fumbled the light setting.

His eyes moved unerringly to the figure half-shadowed by the overhang from which the water coursed. His imagination had to supply the features that shadows and age obscured. Antonio. The space next to the dark-haired boy was where he himself had stood in the photo that hadn't worked.

Eighteen when they'd met; barely nineteen when Antonio had died. The Condors had come over the lip of the hill with the deadly aerial delicacy of warbirds, swooping down on their column with fatal accuracy. He carried the bullet still from that final strafing run. They'd survived previous ones, but that day, the planes had come out of the sun like the dragons of Oriental myth.

He could still recall the shock of surprise when his leg gave way beneath him. Fit young lads don't expect their bodies to let them down. It was only the blood soaking his khakis that had made him realise he was hit. He'd automatically wrapped his bandanna around the leg in a tourniquet, the first-aid lessons lost to his memory but his hands seeming to know what to do. The Condors had been away already, leaving behind the destruction on the dusty road.

He put the photograph back into its scented nest and lifted out a last object. Broken chain slid through his fingers. The St Christopher's had slithered from Antonio's neck as he had grabbed at the punctured body after dragging himself to his friend.

They'd been too young to love, and yet...it had been a kind of love. Och, who was he to try to judge what love was? He'd not done well with it in his life. A boy with whom he'd found companionship and comfort, snatched sexual communion in the midst of a brief, intense war. A girl to whom he had given his devotion all mistakenly. Or was it? Because a love dies or proves unworthy, does that negate the act of loving?

But he knew too little of it. And now, he feared, he really very much feared, that he was making the same mistake again.

He put the relics of the most personal part of his life back into the box and shut it into the drawer. The locks were set, of course; they always were, when he checked. He turned out the lights in hall and living room, glanced into the kitchen to make sure the gas was off.

The mantel clock chimed 10.30 as he set foot on the bottom step. They'd have perhaps as much as six hours together. A scant few hours in which to make memories of warmth and caring to tide them over the days of discreet distance which would follow. It would have to be enough. It would be enough for himself; he was practiced in living with loneliness. It was the other about whom he worried; the other for whom he was risking everything, even his heart.

No fool like an old fool, indeed.

 

###### 13 February

Yet another Saturday night, pub closed, no spirit in him to go on to the clubs. Murph and Lucas had massacred him at darts again. Stupid game. Bloody Cowley ordering him to stop working on the Winters op and "take the night off!" High-handed old bastard. Good thing he'd had the foresight to sneak some of the files he hadn't got to down to the car before Cowley'd done his prima donna and ordered him to hand in everything he was working on and go home. And kept his beady eyes on him as he'd gathered the papers, protesting loudly (as expected) and marched himself down to the file room. More insubordinate comments had got the Controller's door slammed in his face and he'd been free.

He'd get to those files soon. Just needed a moment to gather his concentration. Let the flat warm up. The heating hardly worked at all these days; be better when spring came and the nights warmed and buds of new life appeared on the skeletal trees lining the streets. Or so he told himself.

Lucas had shanghaied him at the car park. With Mac in hospital making the most of a broken nose (possible concussion--though how anyone could tell...), Lucas and Murphy had formed a brief but resoundingly successful one-day partnership that had netted them a small-arms cache secreted in deepest darkest Hertfordshire. He bared his teeth, mirthlessly recalling the exuberance the two younger agents had been feeling, euphoria more like. It was a good feeling, that; a compensation for other lacks when the adrenaline surged and the pulse raced and you felt like a wire-walker, able to wow the world and draw the birds and demolish all the competition at darts.

Not that he was much competition these days. At darts or birds.

There'd been Melina. Greek girl, working at her cousin's restaurant. Charming accent. At least that time, his second attempt at moving on from Bodie, he'd been able to carry through to the end. A valiant effort. She had really been a nice girl. She'd even wanted to have a second date. She'd left her number. That had given him two numbers he'd known he'd never use.

He wasn't at all sure Cowley hadn't arranged for Lucas to carry him off to the Dog. He'd damn well find out, though. Didn't need anyone arranging his social life for him, dammit. He was doing his job. That was all that had to matter to any of them.

Still, he hadn't been reluctant to go. Usually went to the pub when he couldn't stay at work any longer. Hadn't got over that yet. He'd never known he was such a coward until he found himself flinching at the thought of hours alone. Dreading the moment when the stillness about himself became a suffocating vacuum.

He poured himself a glass of plonk--all that was left in the cupboard, reckon it was time to do some shopping--and traced a way through the flat. He'd had a few pints, but getting sodden didn't help. Learned that quick enough. Too on edge to look at the files tonight, but since Cowley'd said he wasn't to go in tomorrow, he'd have them to fill his day. Keep him from thinking. About the growing panic in himself whenever his thoughts strayed towards realising just how long Bodie had been away. About what might be going on for all this time. About whether his partner would ever come back, and what the hell he would do when Bodie did.

He was standing in front of the open wardrobe in his bedroom contemplating getting out of his clothes and into the bath but really staring at the space where Bodie had left some things. Shirts and trousers that he had dragged from the hangers, stuffed into a carrier bag, and dumped inside Bodie's locker at work. So much for knife-edge pleats.

The trouble with temper, like adrenaline rushes, was that when the moment was over, you were just left feeling empty. An emptiness rather like this space in the cupboard where Bodie's few things had hung. He'd removed the clothes, removed Bodie's presence from here, from his room, his own place, but there was no removing the space left behind. It lingered, a canker of nothingness at the heart of his home and he couldn't seem to do anything about it.

The bath was half-filled when the doorbell sounded. A brief staccato code that froze him to the tiled floor for such long unbelieving moments that it sounded again.

He rubbed resolutely at his nose, turned off the taps, and unlocked the door. All he could see for a moment was a broad dark expanse, and then he lifted his eyes and he took a breath and he saw all of him and he smelt him and he sensed his warmth and realness.

"Ray."

He nodded his head. Wasn't sure what at. Just seemed something to do.

"Back then, are you."

"Can I come in? Need to talk to you." Urgency in the deep voice. Had he forgotten that rich dark timbre? No, couldn't have; known him for years.

He sat at the kitchen table, lounging, one trembling hand tucked into a pocket, the other firmly holding the wine glass. So the sod was all right. Main question answered.

"When'd you get back, then?"

"Mid-afternoon. Been debriefing all this time, and seeing Cowley, then Ross. They wouldn't let me call you or do anything until I'd finished dictating my initial report."

Bodie paused; but he had nothing to say.

"Ray, I--" Bodie licked his lips, then stood and turned to the cupboard, getting out a glass and filling it with water, which he drained. He set down the glass and turned, leaning back against the sink unit. "I'm sorry, mate. It wasn't supposed to be like this. I didn't realise--"

He paused again, swallowing with painful clarity.

"Job a success?"

"What?" Bodie sounded distracted, unfocused. "Well, yeah. Everything went smoothly in the end. It just took so long, and I couldn't break it off. I'd committed myself, but I had no idea it would take this long."

He found his head was nodding again mindlessly, and stopped it. He stared at the wine, a spot of rich colour in a greying world. His mouth was dry, but he didn't trust his hand not to shake, so he kept it firmly planted on the table and around the stem of the glass.

"Ray, I'm sorry."

Moments passed. He discovered he didn't have the faintest idea what to say, or do. It was humiliatingly like the worst of his morbid expectations over the past weeks of what would happen if or when his partner--or ex-partner, perhaps--returned.

A dark shadow moving quickly at him made him tense, and then he was staring down into Bodie's wide eyes, feeling the heat of Bodie's big square hand against his knee, feeling the lure of Bodie's presence crowding in on him.

"Ray, I know I hurt you, I shouldn't have done it, I'm--"

He stood up, pushing back the chair so it squealed against the floor. He stepped neatly around Bodie left stranded on one knee on a cruddy kitchen floor, looking ridiculous, well, Bodie never managed to look quite as ridiculous as most people would in the positions he put himself into, but, by Bodie-standards, he looked a right prat.

He grabbed the bottle and topped up his glass. When he looked up, Bodie was slowly rising to his feet, slowly turning around, that hot blue gaze fixing again on him. He met it evenly this time, answering the challenge. He had himself under control now. It was all over, he'd known it for all these weeks, and now it was time to do the decent burial and all that. Maybe they'd be able to rescue the partnership. If it was worth it.

"No point in talking about it now, is there? You're back, glad you're okay. You look all right, anyway. Good that it all turned out right. Expect I'll hear all about your heroic exploits at work. The return of the prodigal and all that; you won't half put out Murph's and Lucas's candles, they're riding high tonight."

He stopped, still staring back at a gaze that was too steady, too knowing. Bodie looked at him consideringly, silent now as he gabbled; had a knack of looking deep when he got thoughtful, Bodie did. All illusion, of course.

"You must be tired. Had a long day myself." He took another careful, controlled drink of wine that wasn't doing a damn thing to moisten his mouth, and became aware of the fingers of his other hand gripping the edge of the sink unit. He prised them away, and met the unwavering stare. Dumb crud still couldn't take a hint.

"Look, I'm knackered. Can we pick this up tomorrow? I was just off to bed."

Bodie merely folded his arms and leaned back against the wall opposite him, eyes never shifting from his face.

"Saturday night. Surprised you aren't out dancing or whatever."

"None of your fucking business, is it!"

Bodie's head tilted back against the wall, eyes deceptively sleepy. After a moment, he leaned forward and, with calm deliberation that got right up his nose, removed his jacket and hung it over the back of a chair. He settled back against the wall again.

"Warm in here," he said, irrelevantly.

"What do you want, Bodie? Want me to accept your apology? Fine. Done. Now get out, I'm ready for bed."

"Heard something about the arms cache in deadly Herts. Lads were celebrating in the Fog and Fuck by the time I got a break this evening. Terry said Lucas had been looking for you; darts challenge."

"Congratulations, your detecting skills have improved no end, just like your accent. Bit of the scouse still clinging, eh?"

A hit. Faint bit of colour in the pale cheeks.

"Pub closed a few hours ago, Ray."

"Brilliant. I tell you." He raised his eyes to the ceiling and back down with the insolent provocation that never failed to set the Cow a-twitter. Bodie, of course, had the corner on insolence and was harder to wind up. He just had to get his wits back under control.

"Didn't go on anywhere? Reckon you must've been home a bit. Why are you still wearing your jacket? It's bloody hot in here."

And his dark nemesis, his dark desire, the dark need in his soul, pushed away from the wall and walked to stand in front of him and gently, oh so gently, cupped his face in both hands and lifted until their eyes met.

"You look terrible."

Blunt fingers stroked over his hair, mouth moueing at the crop, a curl pulled gently out to its fullest, short length and let go to snap back. Fingers touched his temples, his cheeks, his mouth, as though Bodie bloody owned him. He shivered when a thumb settled on his right cheekbone, rubbing softly, the quiet rasp of a calloused pad against his skin unnaturally loud.

"I made a terrible mistake, Ray. I knew it right away, as soon as I got up there. I couldn't quite believe I'd left you like that. And it was only supposed to be six weeks, tops; never expected it to go on for three months."

He put an elbow into Bodie's solar plexus and moved away, shrugging his jacket closer around his shoulders. He took his glass firmly in hand and sat down at the table, prepared to get through the ordeal and have it done with.

"Four months, Bodie."

"Bloody hell," Bodie wheezed, leaning on one hand over the counter. "Ah, fuck, I really needed that."

Rubbing his abdomen, he finally mostly straightened and slid into a chair.

"Three months amongst the scum of the earth, one of the most dangerous assignments I've ever done, and I get more damage from my partner when I get home--"

"It's been four frigging months!"

Bodie stared at him. "I left on October 24th and today's February 13th; well, the 14th now, I reckon. Anyway, that's three-and-a-half months."

"Sixteen weeks. To the day. Four months."

Bodie's eyes, still set on him, suddenly crinkled and his mouth hitched up at the corners. "First a low blow, then an argument about semantics. Now I know I'm home."

He felt a bloom of warmth treacherously threatening to unfurl within himself at the possessive, protective, desirous glow in the dark eyes. Another possible betrayal diverted him abruptly.

"Did Cowley know you were coming back today?"

"Nah, it all blew up early this morning. Easy clean-up, at the end. He sent in a team by helicopter. I cadged a lift back with them, over their protests. Told them I needed to get home without any more delay."

The hot gaze searched his face hungrily. He avoided its enticement, hunting for the distance to think, focusing instead on extraneous matters. On work. On Cowley, who couldn't have told him about Bodie's unexpected return. He hadn't been in on that op at all other than being allowed to read the irregular reports. Cowley'd spent most of the day in his office; must have been on the blower most of the time, keeping up with events. Then debriefing, which meant the agent was kept secluded until the initial report was complete. At least in an op the length and complexity that this one must have been. Cowley had probably known Bodie would contact him as soon as he was free.

He felt a pang. Regrets and confusion eddied about him.

He got up and grabbed the kettle. "Want some tea?" He didn't wait for an answer. Filled the kettle and set it on the gas.

"Yeah, I could murder a gallon or two. Got any scran in?"

Bodie stood, opening the cupboard where the biscuits had been kept.

When the eyes settled on him again, he said, "Didn't know you were coming back, did I? Anyway, four months, all got stale."

He turned his back, busying himself with mugs and warming the pot, looking for milk, rescuing the sugar bowl pushed behind some packets of rice. When he turned to put them on the table, he let himself see for the first time the tiredness in Bodie's face.

"Might be something on the top shelf," he said, gruffly, grabbing the kettle as soon as it whistled.

As he lifted the teapot to the table, he was arrested by the sight of Bodie, stretched to reach to the top shelf, dark shirt riding up from his trousers revealing a band of pale skin, muscles moving close beneath the surface. He swallowed, willing away the wants clamouring in his blood.

"Ahh!" Successful, dropping back down from his toes, turning over his prize. "Bloody hell, Doyle, Hob-nobs? These things are almost wholesome."

"Don't eat 'em then," he said, teeth gritted.

He poured the tea. Bodie tore open the package and dropped crumbs everywhere. It was all so depressingly normal.

Allowing that they'd never been exactly normal in the first place.

"What do you want, Bodie?"

His partner looked startled at the abrupt question. He remembered asking the same question before; he remembered the answer he'd received.

"I want you. Us. The way you said. And to make it up to you. Whatever I can. And if I can't, then to make the most of the rest of our lives as we can. Together."

He let himself be cradled in the hot, direct, blue caress. Within himself, another tendril of warmth dared unfurl. The bittersweet ache of the moment was almost too much.

"You know I love you, Ray. You're always saying I'm thick; finally figured that out for myself within a couple of days of leaving you. I panicked, that's the truth. Couldn't take it, first you saying you wanted more, then you almost getting killed. Probably loved you for ages, but I couldn't admit how much I needed you. Never needed anyone before. Not the same way I need you on the street, to guard my back, but need you in my life so I'm--whole.

"I've never been so miserable. Couldn't contact you. Sent you a message, but couldn't do it more than once. Made a lot of stupid decisions in my life, starting with the one that had me shipping out as cabin boy with my drunken uncle when I was fourteen. Well, didn't know he was a drunk till we got to sea away from my aunt, but--"

"Message? What message?"

Bodie blinked red-rimmed eyes and gaped until he found the place in the conversation. "With Mendley. Only time I dared try it. Hoped you'd know I was coming back, that I knew I'd made a mistake."

"Mendley. Back in November? I never got a message."

"You must have. I told her, I made a point of telling her, that I was going to settle down. Well, you know, saying that the job was going to take a while."

"Oh yeah, that message. A real comfort, that one."

"I told her," Bodie enunciated slowly, "that I was going to get an aquarium. That there was an angelfish I'd seen that I wanted."

The silence that followed was profound. He lost count of the number of times his eyes blinked as he looked into Bodie's frowning face.

At last, taking a breath, he said, "You call that a message? Christ on a pogo stick, Bodie!"

"Didn't you get it?"

He thrust his face into Bodie's unshaven visage, and snarled, "No, I didn't bleeding well get it! We don't train CI5 agents to record other agents' half-witted ramblings about their stupid decorating ideas!"

"She never told you."

The voice was flat. He realised Bodie was quite plainly exhausted. He irritably pushed his jacket off his arms, letting it fall to the seat behind himself, and rubbed at his aching temples.

"You counted on me knowing all this time." He didn't bother making it a question.

Bodie nodded, mouth pursed. "Hoped, anyroad. All I could do, once I'd got myself stuck up there."

"Yeah." He sighed, glanced at his watch. Nearly 2.00. Bodie needed sleep. He wasn't sure what he himself needed, or what he should do. "Look--"

"Ray, I meant what I said. I made this terrible mistake, I should never have left, I realised virtually right away that I was in love with you. We can make it work, I'm sure of it. I've been thinking about it every spare moment for the last three--four months."

"You didn't even leave me a note, Bodie. You didn't even tell me you were going. You just disappeared. I had to ask the Cow where you were, and then all he'd say was that you were up north. Maybe for six weeks, maybe longer."

"I know. I've been bashing myself about it for months."

Bodie stopped, took a breath, then reached a hand slowly across the table and touched his bare arm below the pushed-up sleeve of his sweater. He tensed, allowing it; wanting it.

"We're both tired. I've got to see Cowley early, more debriefings. Then help with the interrogations. You look awful. Haven't been sleeping, have you. Can we go to bed, Ray? Or, at least, I'll crash on the sofa if you don't want me in bed."

He lost himself for a moment in the sensation of the strong fingers stroking his arm, but the sadness inherent in the tender, yet tentative, touch rooted him back in cold reality.

"You take so very much on yourself, Bodie," he murmured, holding his partner's gaze. "You've been gone for four months. I didn't know if you ever intended to come back. Didn't know how long you'd be, who you were with. Didn't know what you'd be wanting once you got back. And you just expected me to wait at home, didn't you."

Bodie stiffened. The big warm hand paused against his arm, then lifted carefully away, withdrawing to his own side of the table.

"You've found someone else."

"Why would you assume you can dump me for all this time and then just come back and everything's going to be the same? Why d'you do that, Bodie? Been sitting up there making airy-fairy plans for our future while I've been here not knowing a thing that's going on. Not knowing anything except that one minute, my partner's telling me he thinks we need some time to think, and the next moment, he's gone without a word.

"The last I heard, Bodie, you wanted a fuck now and again, that's all. I told you I wanted more, that I needed more, and you ran. You bloody turned tail and ran and you left me with nothing. So now you're back and I'm just supposed to slot neatly into your new plans."

He stopped, his breath getting short. He reached blindly for the tea, but it was cold. He needed something in his hands. He wouldn't damn well cry. He'd done enough of that, in private.

Bodie stood, a distraction in himself. Dark, broad, impressive, he moved to the sink and brought back a glass of water. He placed it in front of him, and then, with that sweet gentleness which few people ever suspected of him, and fewer experienced, Bodie's fingers traced slowly down his cheek before his partner sat again. He felt branded and bereft when Bodie's touch left him, and hated it, hated that swell of demeaning need in himself, the wanting despite everything Bodie had done.

"There is someone else, then."

He looked into the shadowed eyes and hesitated, feeling himself on a cusp of rejection, as in that moment with Ann that had made him open himself to Bodie in the wake of her denial. Then Bodie had left him, too, and he'd reeled again in loss. Now Bodie was back and it was himself who would have to hurt. One, or the other. And it was Bodie's fault. Bodie had done this to him, to them. To all three of them, to more than Bodie knew or would want to know, but Bodie had to know, they were in it now together with rejection a cold wind whipping the eddies of emotion into sinkholes.

Bodie had made him the crux. He was the one who would have to deal out hurt and denial and be hurt again in turn himself. And why should Bodie, of all of them, be excused his part in the painful farce?

"Yeah," he said, at last, still holding the gaze opposite, offering with hard-won calm a half-truth that might just prove to be the only truth that mattered to Bodie.

"Shit." Bodie stood again, moved to stare blindly at the dark curtained window. "Ah, shit, Ray. I know it's been weeks, but I don't see...."

He swung around and stared at him. "Quick work, isn't it? Met another Little Miss Red, have you? Wedding plans in the offing, long-term security. Has Cowley vetted her yet? Or is that treat in store for me again?"

"How many birds have you been with in the last four months?" he retorted.

"One. Because she was part of the gang and I had no choice. Took a fancy to me; I wasn't in a position to say no, and it saved me having to go through the motions with a series of them."

Their eyes held, then there was a flurry of dark and he was being hauled up out of the chair, his arms held in a bruising grip.

"I know how you love, Ray, the intensity of it, the loyalty. I don't believe any bird could have destroyed what you feel for me, not so soon. We've got years behind us. It'd take more than some prissy little miss to match this--"

He couldn't avoid the kiss despite a last minute twist. Reactions down, too bloody tired. And the anger that had sustained him through all these cold months stupidly seemed to have died and left him bereft the moment the object of it returned.

He closed his eyes and fell into the rich, nurturing ardour. For the first time in months, he leant on strength greater than his own, clasped a whirlwind of passion to match his own in his own strong arms and anchored it to himself. He felt a heated hardness springing in his groin that had nothing of gentleness about it, yet everything of tenderness, and felt the shift in the sturdy body, the thrust of a muscled thigh to clasp his own, a matching hard need.

He dragged himself away with an effort, wiping a hand across his mouth as he stumbled back against the fridge. Bodie faced him, breathing heavily, mouth reddened and damp and set, eyes smouldering. The exhaustion was gone from Bodie's face, banished by the same adrenaline that was powering himself, fear and love and need stickily intertwined. He wanted nothing but to feed from that source of his strength, and nurture with his own strength in return.

"Let me back, Ray." Bodie's breathing was ragged, his voice strained. "I can give you everything any Little Miss Red in the world could. We've had years together. What can she offer that I can't?"

And caught there, in a light that seemed too dazzling and a darkness that was too alluring, he spoke more of his truth because he had nothing else. Just as he'd spoken his truth months before, which had made Bodie leave him. And he kept his eyes open, awaiting the same result, drawing on the calmness of the self-immolator even as he wore the executioner's hood.

"I never said it was a bird. Or a stranger."

"What? But...."

Only a moment until Bodie had his breathing under control. He felt the old surge of pride in his partner's strength, in the way the will matched the body. He met the narrowed eyes evenly, recognising the slightly manic light in them now, awaiting the inevitable next question.

"Who?"

"What's it matter?" Didn't know why he was avoiding it; not ashamed. Sad, oh yes; but not ashamed. He shrugged and forestalled Bodie's next comment: "Cowley."

"No." Firm, adamant. Stupid crud.

"Yeah."

The clock is ticking, Bodie, a detached part of his mind thought as a flick of his eyes caught his watch face again. Past three now. Let's get on with it, shall we.

"You're shagging Cowley?" Eyes staring at him relentlessly as the voice reached a higher pitch than normal.

He wouldn't answer it again; anyway, not necessary.

"You touch him--you let him--" Bodie shook himself, straightened his broad shoulders. "Why, Ray? Why'd you do it?"

He tilted his head, considering, and then offered his deepest truth: "It's been a cold winter, Bodie."

And watched dispassionately as his partner flinched, lids closing momentarily over electric blue, only to fly open again, already prepared for another feint.

"It can't be serious. I know you want me. I can see it. I know it's true."

He might know it, but everything about his tight stance and his voice shouted out defiance and nervousness that made sadness well inside himself at the muck they'd made of what could have been so finely pure.

"Yeah," he said. "Haven't got over you. Fool that I am." He rubbed irritably, automatically, at the goose-flesh abruptly pebbling his arms. "Probably never will. You're under my skin, Bodie. In my blood. I want to take you to bed right now and just hold you all night even though I'm not even sure how to trust you any more. But he was there when you weren't. I won't just dump him now."

"That's it, then? You want me, but you're gonna go on fucking him. Fucking that old man."

He just looked. Just let his eyes answer, and Bodie read them, and turned. And he stayed still, eyes blind on the pale green wall opposite as he heard the measured footsteps moving away from him, heard the tumblers of the locks being released, heard the quiet click of the door closing again. Only then did he let himself slide down the smooth refrigerator door to sit on the floor, arms resting on his upraised knees, hands dangling limply, the ice creeping back into his veins.

 

###### 15 February

Cowley heaved himself from the wing chair with a resigned sigh when the doorbell chimed. He'd hoped for more than fifteen minutes' peace before the summons came. The day had been another long and hectic one, though rewarding enough to thread a glow of satisfaction throughout himself, despite his tiredness. Aye, Devane and his crew had had a pretty set-up, it couldn't be denied, and Bodie had done excellent work. The interrogations were mostly going well; with a bit of luck--and diligence, of course--the majority of the more far-reaching contacts should be under arrest within the next few days. After that, of course, they would have reached their bolt-holes and be harder to ferret out. No, the need now was to push as hard as possible. A few hours' rest and he'd be fresh to push on.

He moved towards the front door at a leisurely pace, favouring his leg. He'd been on it too much the past days since Bodie had broken the case, moving from cell to cell, collating information as it had been extracted, overseeing his agents set to do the questioning. Overseeing--at a remove, mind--Bodie's continued debriefing. He paused before the door. No doubt whom it would be. Still, ingrained habits aren't easily gainsaid, and he checked the spyhole nonetheless before releasing the locks.

The culprit leaned negligently against the door frame. He looked scruffier than usual, not even the ruthless crop of his hair enough to keep those corkscrews in order. Dark-circled eyes told their own story.

"You neglected to invite me for a drink. Victory celebration. So I invited meself." Insolent pup!

"Och, you'd best get yourself inside, then, before my neighbours begin wondering why I'm sheltering the homeless now. Your clothes are a disgrace, Doyle. I sent you off for a simple pick-up in Hampstead, which didn't include a tour around Docklands!"

"Should've told Jiminy Cricket, shouldn't you? He's the one who did a bolt. Seemed to think he could actually reach his brother's yacht before I caught him."

Teeth bared and eyes gleaming, Doyle was malevolence personified. Blinking away his own momentary fascination, he limped into the living room, waving his guest unnecessarily towards the kitchen he was already entering.

"Fettucine alfredo," Doyle said, with a satisfied smirk as he carried a glass of wine into the living room three-quarters of an hour later. "Mrs Henning is improving."

The tiredness showed as the slim body slumped into the chair on the opposite side of the fire. The previous day's leave had apparently not offered the respite for the lad he had hoped it would when he'd ordered Doyle to take the day off. Nor, it would seem, had the time led to a satisfactory resolution of Doyle's personal situation.

Aware of the brooding brittleness the man radiated, he waited in a silence gently marked by the quiet tick of the clock. The scotch was rich on his tongue. He consciously let go a little more of the day's tension in the secure familiarity of the chair at his back, the crystal glass in his hand, the presence nearby.

When Doyle finally spoke, it was with his own quiet intensity. "Nothing has to change."

He looked at the lad directly, then, and saw the desperation behind the calmness on the arresting face. Bodie, now, had had a face like a mask these past two days. Obviously tired, with icy eyes, he had been, nevertheless, unvaryingly controlled and professional. Not that he had expected less. Nor that Doyle would give less than his best, no matter the circumstances. Aye, and he had probably not helped matters, after all. Old fools....

"Leg bad tonight? Saw you limping at HQ."

Doyle was going to his knees on the floor at his feet with that grace of his, hands reaching to massage the tight muscles in his thigh. It had started like this, on a night in early December, the chess match interrupted as his leg had seized up with pain. Long fingers had pushed away his own rubbing hands with a strength that startled, working his muscle until the spasms eased. Strong, delicately boned hands that had lulled them both until a curly head had dropped to rest against his other leg, as though the lad were a weary child starved of comfort, or warmth.

Idiotic fancy to harbour about such a tough man, yet when he'd finally breached those defences and glimpsed the vulnerability within...well. Perhaps he shouldn't have answered the need, but he'd felt the call shiver through himself, echoing down the years of aloneness he himself had known. Something in him had been unable to ignore that stark, mute plea; like calling to like, perhaps. He'd placed a tentative hand on the bowed head and stroked as he had in the cellar, for comfort for them both. As he stroked again now, his hand no longer awkward in the touch, but moulding itself accustomedly to the soft shorn head.

"Aye, well, there'll be no more of it, bonny lad. It went too far as it is. We both knew it couldn't go on. Bodie is back and it's up to you now to make what you can of your life."

"I'm not leaving you alone in this fucking mausoleum for ever!"

"You'll do what you're told and I'll not have that language in my home! Oh, get up, Doyle, you'll put a cramp into my other leg. Pour us both a drink, man."

Half a glass of whisky each later, two almost-matched tempers had banked themselves back down to embers. It could become ludicrous if he thought too closely about the similarities in himself to this hot-headed young fool.

"I'll not talk about it again, lad, but I'll say this now: you know what it is you want in life, so use that brain and that clever good sense of yours to make sure you get it."

Doyle met his eyes with the understanding that had unnervingly grown between them over these past weeks, and nodded. He drained his glass and moved to place it on the drinks tray. Heading towards the door, however, he paused as though struck by a sudden thought.

"We will continue the chess matches, though," he said, all insolent decisiveness. "Once a fortnight or so, I think. You do really need to work on those outmoded defence strategies of yours."

And before he could say anything in rebuttal, his visitor was shrugging into his coat and heading out into the night.

He paused at the door to watch the slim-legged, broad-shouldered figure flash down the steps and across the road to the Capri. Then he shut the door and set the locks, turning back into the chill quiet of his empty home. For a moment, a wave of desolation moved sickly through his blood, but by his fourth step down the tastefully appointed hallway, the tricky problem of Sanderson, Devane's alleged contact in Eire, wholly preoccupied his attention.

:::::::

Bodie shifted on the seat, trying vainly to ease his tired body into a comfortable position, and cast another futile look up at the dark windows of Doyle's flat. Glancing again at the luminescent dial of his watch, he sighed as he turned the key in the ignition and bumped up the heater for another few minutes of warmth. Like being on a bloody obbo, this was, except instead of being bored out of his skull, he couldn't escape the acid anxiety churning in his gut. Or escape his awareness of the empty seat beside himself where his partner belonged.

Both on the job and in his life.

He hadn't seen Doyle at all since walking out on him two nights before. He closed his eyes in pain at that memory, but opened them quickly to cast a superstitious glance up at the dark windows once more, as if Doyle might magically transport himself inside the locks and barricade himself there. Couldn't blame his partner if he did, but he needed to have his say first.

Two long days after an exhaustingly long op and a homecoming the like of which he could never have imagined. The debriefings continued. Hours spent in the computer room poring over print-outs and files on possible associates of the Devane lot, combing his memory for matches with every face he might have glimpsed, however briefly, however peripherally, every name he might have heard in passing. Time with Ross building psychological profiles of the principals involved. A start made on his own direct interrogations of some of those already in custody.

Cowley not much in evidence. Not anywhere he had been, at any rate.

Sodding old geezer. Who'd've ever thought it?

He shifted irritably again, and pinched at the bridge of his nose, concentrating on tamping down the throb behind his eyes, shutting out everything else. Cowley wasn't the important issue, anyway. He raised his head and sent another bleak glance around the deserted street.

His partner had had the previous day off, as he'd learned upon reaching headquarters yesterday morning after a short and mostly sleepless night. He'd worked until nine, with food and rest breaks, and each time he'd rung, Doyle's phone hadn't been answered. He'd come straight round after work, to find a dark flat and no car in sight. He'd walked the grid of nearby streets, but he hadn't seen any car he recognised as CI5 issue--though to say he was out-of-touch with current events was putting it mildly.

He grimaced ruefully. Made a hash of a lot of his life in the past, no denying it, but he'd thought he'd put all that behind him donkey's years ago when he'd returned to England and entered the Army. Chock-full of his own worldly experience and confidence and he went and cocked-up the single most important thing to happen to him.

He'd waited until midnight the previous night, enduring the cold and tiredness with the stoic doggedness of a man with no other option. At last convinced that Doyle wouldn't be coming home, or, if he did, wouldn't be in any state to listen to him, he'd driven home. With a rather long detour past Cowley's Kensington flat. More dark windows, and no recognisable car in sight, though if that meant anything or not....

Doyle had been at work today, he'd found that out right away, but he hadn't seen hair nor hide of him all day. Elusive bugger. Had Cowley had a hand in that, keeping Doyle occupied elsewhere?

Cowley wasn't the point, though. Rather not think about the Old Man at all right now.

Doyle had signed out just after 7.30. Not long after Cowley. He himself had got away at 8.00 and come straight round again. To dark windows and a bell unanswered and no motor in view. To more hours of cold discomfort and the churning in his belly and the fear creeping like icy fingers up his back.

Doyle had to come home sometime. Had to let him talk to him, too. He just needed to talk to him, to tell him it was going to be all right. Somehow or other, they'd work it out. It could work out. It could be okay.

Had to be, hadn't it?

He rested his head back against the seat and let his eyes sink half-shut. Doyle had looked...damaged. His eyes, large and expressive even in the normal course of things, had looked twice their usual size in a thinned-down face, and they'd stared at him, all mingled challenge and want and refusal at once. Anger a dark-burning coal in the centre of each eye. But it was Doyle's hurt he'd felt most of all, his prickly partner shedding it like deadly tiny pins, a shower of razor-edged fragments whenever he'd tried to get close.

Doyle hadn't got that message after all. Long shot; still, he'd hoped.

Yeah, just hoped you'd be waiting for me with open arms and a happy smile, didn't I, sweetheart? After you gave me everything you had and I....

But I'll make it right. I'll make it up to you. I'll love you more than anyone else ever possibly could. Anyone. No matter who. Know you better than anyone else. Know how to keep you safe, just like on the streets.

Because I need you, too, mate. Need your understanding me without my having to say anything. Need to see you laugh at my jokes. Need to see your eyes glowing with contentment when I touch you or smile at you; need to know no one makes you light up the way I do. Need you turning to me when things get bad, to me as the safe place to share your pain or to rage against the injustices and the cock-ups and the cons and the corrupters and the downbeaten, doomed Bennys and all the things you can't change, the people you can't help or can't stop, depending. Need your strength in my arms, and you at my back, and the bright hard spear of your mind piercing me and prodding me. Even need you taunting me to jog with you on those bleeding cold mornings, always challenging me, you are. Never had a challenge like you before in my life.

All the adventures I thought I'd had, all the life I thought I'd lived, and I found more challenge in the little finger of a difficult sod of an ex-copper than I'd ever imagined possible.

So it's going to be all right. I'll make it be all right, love. You just have to let me talk to you and I'll make it right.

Headlights coursed along the street, slithering eel-like over the curve of his mudguard, interrupting his mute litany. The car snugged itself with neat economy next to his own. Exactly where it belonged.

:::::::

His partner got out of the silver Capri as Doyle parked its bronze twin in the space left clear in front. Unable to avoid it, he looked at Bodie full in the face for the first time since Saturday night.

Looked like shit, poor crud. And bloody fucking beautiful, as his Bodie always was, no matter what. He'd given the black gear a rest, dressed in tan cords instead, the collar of a cream shirt showing above a muffling brown jacket. Big hands thrust into his pockets; not much for scarves and gloves was Bodie. Pale uncovered column of his throat seemed both defenceless and strong. He wondered if he'd ever touch the life-pulse in the side of that throat again.

Bodie followed him silently upstairs and inside. He busied himself making tea, rubbing his hands, waiting for the damn heating to kick in, absorbed by the sounds of Bodie moving around the flat.

"Found my things in the locker," Bodie said, as he went into the living room.

He put the tea tray on the coffee table and let his lips quirk in response to the wry note in Bodie's voice. But he said nothing. Said enough two nights ago, seemed like. The ball was Bodie's now, he reckoned.

Bodie wouldn't sit to have his tea. Stood staring broodingly at him with the light of the lamp haloing him from behind. Very obvious positioning. He didn't deign to acknowledge it, refusing to look towards the obscured figure. All well and good for Cowley to say he should grab what he wanted in life; wasn't up to him.

Sooner than he had expected, Bodie came to him. Seated himself on the coffee table and leaned forward to speak in that rich velvety voice, throbbing with suppressed passion.

"I've spent all these past weeks regretting leaving you. I left you again two nights ago. I'm not doing it again. Had enough of that. Just want you to know."

Bodie reached slowly and took his hand. He let it rest in the big paw, feeling Bodie's calluses press against his own as his partner cautiously entwined their fingers. He felt the oddness of the touch, well remembered and yet no longer the only touch he knew.

Cowley's hands had a curious softness, the ageing skin not the parchment he'd expected, but like butter-soft suede.

"Let's try again, eh, Ray? Whatever you want--need. Everything."

"What about Cowley?"

Bodie's hand tightened on his momentarily, lips thinning. A prideful man, Bodie; and possessive.

"Be lying if I said I liked it. Or understood it, for that matter. Still can't quite picture Cowley as ginger; well, don't want to picture it at all." He shrugged, looking uncomfortable. "I can still work with him, though, if that's what you're worried about. Have to tell you straight up, though, I mean to court you, Ray Doyle. Know exactly what he sees in you, but I know I can make it better for you than that randy old bastard--"

"Oh, shut up, Bodie!" He pulled his hand away and ran it distractedly through his hair. "He did it for me, you know. Nothing to do with him. D'you understand? Did it for me when I had no one else. Just strangers around me, just people. None of it was for him. Risked everything, I reckon. What's he got except CI5?

"Started out with occasional dinners, but I needed more, I pushed. I did it, Bodie. I think he saw I was falling to bits and, for some reason, he thought there was something in me worth risking it all for. Didn't amount to much, just a few hours snatched together, all so discreet. Only a handful of times in all the months you've been gone. Don't see that he got much out of it, but I...I needed someone to touch, and a familiar voice in the dark."

"Ray--"

He firmed his lips and stared at his partner. "So now you're back and swearing undying devotion and all that, and maybe I believe you--maybe I'm really that much of a fool--but it's not that simple, is it? Because he was there for me, Bodie. He risked losing even CI5. Maybe not much of a chance of that happening, considering everything, but there was a chance and he took it. And now you think I should just leave him on his tod because you've decided you want me after all."

"All right. It's all right."

Bodie looked so damn bleak he felt a churning of anguish in his belly. How had they got to this state just because he'd glimpsed a special place beckoning and had tried to take them there?

He reached out himself this time and picked up his partner's limp hand. He held it in his right and used his left to smooth the strong fingers closed over the edge of his palm. He lifted the hand to his face and touched it to his cheekbone, to that place where no one but Bodie touched him, and he felt the tingle of connection, the rightness of it, and drew the hand down to kiss the knuckle in benediction.

"Only want you, Bodie. Have for a bloody long time. Tried it with a couple of birds while you were gone, but it didn't work. Only means anything with you. But there's Cowley--"

"It's all right. I know. Come to terms with it, haven't I. Wondered if that's where you were last night, but it doesn't matter, you don't have to say anything."

So it wasn't to be rejection after all. And did this proud man mean it, then? Could Bodie really want him that much? The voice was a lure drawing him back towards trust, the warm sweet lure he didn't ever want to escape.

"We've made a royal mess between us," he said, taking the trust and returning it, "but I reckon we should give it another go. Properly, this time. Maybe we can make it work. The alternative...."

It was his hand being drawn to Bodie's lips now, Bodie's gaze hot enough to make those tendrils of warmth burst into blossom inside him.

"Come to bed, Ray," whispered the dark voice of his dreams, and they were in the bedroom, baring each other with a frantic need finally unleashed.

In the end, though, they were too tired and fraught and careful with each other to do more than use their hands and the slide of their flesh to bring themselves to climax. When Bodie tried to move down his body, offering the bliss of his mouth, he pulled him back up and held him close.

"Stay with me," he whispered.

Bodie closed his arms about him in turn and the dark voice promised, "I'm here."

Bodie's leg crossed his pelvis as his partner eased their erections together. He clutched at the powerful biceps as Bodie's mouth fastened on his throat, and he lost his senses in the chaos of coming, unsure who'd come first or if it'd happened together, knowing only that it was always best with this man. That there was nothing comparable for him with anyone else. That of all the people in the world he might ever conceivably have wanted, this one of them all, this one alone was the need at the heart of his love.

 

###### Epilogue

He awoke to a chill on his backside contrasting with the warmth of Bodie plastered down his front. He snagged the covers and wrapped them both, finishing to discover his partner gazing at him. Tired eyes were lightened now with contentment. Bodie didn't look bleak any more. Sombre, but not lost.

"It's good to be home," his partner murmured.

He smiled into the watchful eyes.

"Yes," he agreed, tucking his hand into Bodie's armpit. Bodie hated that; always said it tickled. He smiled again at the resigned sigh that wafted across his cheek.

"Bodie, about Cowley--"

"I told you, it'll be okay. If I have to share you, a little, then I'll deal with it. I can, you know, if that's the price."

"How?" he asked, in wonderment rather than disbelief. "How can you accept that?"

Lips were moving over his face as Bodie spoke. "I've lived the alternative these last months, too, Ray. I know what it's like to be cold."

Bodie lifted his head abruptly and looked down at him. A blunt finger gently touched his nose.

"You gave me it all, didn't you, mate? All those months ago, when I panicked. Spread it all out before me like a banquet, everything you needed and everything you wanted. Everything you felt. And I just--" He shrugged, wide mouth twisting into a grimace.

"Kicked sand all over my picnic rug." With a quick move, he caught the finger with his own mouth.

Bodie's lips softened into a smile. "Yeah. Ow! Bloody hell. Leggo, you damn piranha. Bet you never did that to Cow--"

He watched as ruefulness replaced playfulness, and stopped the mouth with a finger placed in an offering of his own.

"Dunno how we're gonna get on, Bodie, but whatever happens, it's down to us. Do care about Cowley, you know, in a way, but not like you. Not anything like I feel for you. Drove the bike out of town yesterday, tried to think my way through this mess. Didn't think you'd ever put up with competition, didn't see how I'd bear it if you did but got someone of your own on the side, too. But I know the frozen tundra Cowley lives in, and I couldn't stand to think of him there alone--"

"It's all right. I promise. Ray--"

He stopped the broken voice with his lips and whispered the last of his truth into his partner's mouth: "It's over. The sex is, anyway. I would've continued it, for his sake, but Cowley won't have it. Let me know in no uncertain terms it's time I got on with my own life. Maybe should have told you sooner. Sorry, mate."

Long moments passed as he watched his partner's stiff face relax, the bloom of relief and happiness turning up the corners of the mouth and lighting the tired eyes to lustrous blue. He felt the exact moment when his partner's buoyant confidence returned, the arms closing around him with proprietorial strength while a quirked eyebrow radiated cheer.

"Testing me, Raymond?"

He smiled at the voice no longer tremulous but silken and felt a sunburst of warmth permeate every fibre of his being. For the first time, he realised that maybe, just maybe, they'd not only manage to salvage what they'd wrecked, but might raise something glorious from the ruins.

"Maybe," he murmured in reply, returning the tease with lazy provocation while he feathered back a strand of dark hair that had strayed over Bodie's temple. "Want to make something of it?"

"Want to love you to death. Want to keep you warm for ever."

As Bodie matched lips and fingers and thrusting hips to words and his senses swam towards overload, he heard an echo of sound like the sibilance of leather slippers moving across plush carpet, preternaturally loud in a large empty space.

"Not leaving him always on his own, though," he muttered, as Bodie rolled onto his back and drew him to lie on top of the hard, familiar body. "Not all alone in that big place, stubborn old goat."

Bodie's thighs parted, Bodie's hands cupped his buttocks, pulling him in ever closer, ever more connected. He pushed himself up so he could mouth a small responsive nipple, nuzzle up the central valley of the breastbone, absorbing Bodie's salt, Bodie's essence. He lifted his head and looked down into his partner's flushed face, the eyes heavy with arousal fixed unwaveringly on him.

"Not alone, Bodie," he said, with his last barely coherent thought.

"No," Bodie agreed, and licked up a tear, or a drop of sweat, just before it fell from Doyle's cheek.


End file.
